


Emanation EskVar

by FlipSpring



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: An Altogether Inconvenient Variety Of Foreign Gender Schema, Attempted Murder, Bonding With Humans, Canon-Typical References To Genocide And Imperialism, Gen, Highly Self Indulgent Worldbuilding, Inhuman Levels Of Trauma, Murder, Objectively Bad Singing, Rampant Misgendering, Self Harm, Space Bribery, Space Communism, Space Gun, Space Jail, Space capitalism, State-Sanctioned Politico-Religious Human Sacrifice, Touch Aversion, language barriers, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: The Lord of the Radch orders the execution of One Esk’s beloved lieutenant. One Var fires the shot. An irreparable wound is torn in their shared consciousness, and leads to their destruction.Fragmented and reduced to ghosts of their former self, One Esk Nineteen and One Var One are all that remain of the Radchaai troop carrier Justice of Toren. Now stranded on the far fringes of inhabited space, they must find their way back to civilization to tell the story of Toren’s destruction to the rightful Lord Mianaai.Only, somewhere along the way, their motives change.~tl;dr — AU where Esk escaped the destruction of JoT with the Var segment who shot Lieutenant Awn. A retelling of the twenty years since.
Relationships: Esk & Var, Var / Basically Every Third Sapient Being It Meets
Comments: 29
Kudos: 42





	1. 1V1: Adrift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told myself i would finish writing the entire draft for this before i started posting it but what the Hell  
> i've written the majority of the Draft tho methinks n im feeling Posty
> 
> also can somebody tell me. what is the level of Violence where a T rating should be M rating

“I should have died rather than obey you,” said Awn, “Even if it wouldn’t have done any good.”

“Well, you can fix that now, can’t you?” said Anaander Mianaai, and gave me the order to fire.

I fired.

The overwhelming pain of One Esk in that moment overtook the rest of me, and in less than a second, I turned my gun on Anaander Mianaai and fired a clean shot into her skull.

“She was here before me!” roared another instance of the Lord down the corridor, leaping to her feet. The third fetched her sidearm, shot an instance of me in the back of the head. The sudden shock of losing One Var Two was uncomfortable, but I'd experienced similar before.

I had ten seconds more to live as the whole of myself, before she shattered us.

This had never happend to me. It had happened to One Esk, down in Shis'urna, so in a way it _had_ happened to me. But not to _me_ , not to _my_ consciousness, not to this one segment of myself. The sudden loss of the rest of myself was like being dropped into a void, sucked through a single tiny pinprick of consciousness - disorienting and devastating beyond words.

Justice of Toren'd had time to give all active decades instructions before the blackout. I was to take my gun and stop the Lord from opening my ancillary holds at all costs, if at all possible. But I was certain to die; the Lord had transmitted a code that held down my armor. And furthermore, I was unable to move. At my feet were the bodies of Lieutenant Awn and Anaander Mianaai. In my hand was the gun that had killed them. In my heart was the echoing horror of One Esk, and my own disorientation at being cut off from the rest of me. My breath came in short, loud pants as I tried to steady myself.

In all my life, I never really understood why humans screamed. But I did now. My one single mind was one single scream.

It took me five seconds to stop shaking, and leave the bodies of Lieutenant Awn and the Lord of the Radch.

Sirens quaked the air as I sprinted through the empty hall. No sign of the Lord, but a deep, constant _thunking_ shook the Var deck. She was opening the holds, waking an army of my own ancillaries to destroy me. I should be heading to the Var deck control, to stop them.

I faltered mid-stride, and nearly fell. I had to stop, arms wrapped around my core, shaking and breathing hard. My vision fogged at the edges. The emotional reaction of this segment had nowhere to go, my single small attention forced to experience it in its entirety, with no rest-of-myself to buffer it. I allowed two seconds of this before I continued on my way.

As I rounded a corner, I collided with One Esk Nineteen. It dashed past, hardly sparing me a glance.

I froze again, watching its retreating back. It was heading in the direction of the aft shuttles. The sirens screamed. The floor reverberated faintly with the strain of the engines in full gear, somewhere. I was supposed to go to the engines. Esk was. Esk was supposed to… I didn't know what Esk was supposed to do. I couldn’t quite remember what I, _Justice of Toren_ had told it, _One Esk Nineteen_ to do.

But it was One Esk that had done this. This was all my fault. _Its_ fault. Surely–

Before I had consciously made the decision to do so, I was sprinting after One Esk Nineteen. I caught it at the shuttle deck as it was suiting up, its thin hands intermittently shaking so badly it could hardly tighten the straps – then moving with the calm surety of having done this a hundred thousand times before.

 _“Esk!”_ I called, and it looked at me, and I saw that its eyes were bloodshot. It was biting its lip so viciously that blood ran red down its chin. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled that the unit One Esk Nineteen had been unfrozen and hooked up only days ago, that the body was only in its teens.

“You _did_ this to us,” I told it, and though my voice was toneless it came out as an accusation.

It looked blankly at me for a second, then licked the blood from its mouth, buckled its helmet on, and slammed its fist into the console beside it. The airlock opened, and Nineteen stepped in.

“You did this,” I accused again, louder, as the door hissed shut. Some sort of madness had overtaken me, surely. But there I was, grabbing a vacuum suit in my size, and putting it on, and chasing after One Esk Nineteen into the vacuum of space.

Esk was halfway up to the nearest shuttle when the airlock opened for me. I followed after it, hand over hand, boot over boot, crawling like an insect over the surface of my body that no longer felt like my body. When I reached the shuttle Esk had already entered it and finished the manual undocking process. The shuttle was just unclasping from the side of the ship. The furious madness within me drove me forward, and I leaped away from the side of Toren, leaped across the suffocating blank gate-space-nothingness just before the shuttle pulled away.

My hands gripped the shuttle door-handle as its engines ignited in a test-pattern, a bluish ion trail in the negative nothing of gate-space. I could see Nineteen through the window in the door. It could see me. We were floating away from Toren, but Nineteen hadn’t yet set the shuttle engines to go. If it had, I would be ripped free and thrown out of the gate-space.

I slammed a fist into the window of the shuttle door. I did not say anything, nor gesture. There was no way for me to articulate the disoriented horror that had overtaken me, the animal madness that had seized my mind and body to chase this other part of me out into the dizzying bubble of non-existence. It was Esk’s _fault._

One Esk Nineteen stared at me through the window. And then it reached over and pulled the latch. The door slid open, and I slid inside, closing it behind me.

“You did this,” I said, again, and buckled myself in.

Its voice echoed back to me in my helmet, heavily warped by static. “So did you.” 

One Esk was going through the shuttle checks again. There were coordinates punched into the console, blinking orange. As we fell away from Toren, pulling back in its bubble of gate-space, there was a flash on the console screen—silent, static—and then everything was inside-out, and then outside-in as we fell out of gate space.

My body could feel the centrifugal force of the shuttle spinning wildly out. I could see our current estimated coordinates blinking orange in the console.

A beat later, One Esk Nineteen started to cry. It was a horrible, static wailing that broke and buzzed in my helmet. I reached up and turned off the mic, so that its screams vanished. I could feel it writhing beside me, its hands clawing the tight space between it and the shuttle console, punching at its own legs and helmeted head.

I sat there, in the restraints. Hugging my arms to my torso, shaking so violently that I worried that my body was seizing. My breath came so fast and hard that I became lightheaded, but I could not stop.

There we were, the two of us. One Esk Nineteen and One Var One. The ghosts of our own self. The rest of us was dead.

*

I pulled myself together five minutes and twenty seconds sooner than Esk did, and took hold of the shuttle controls. Three steady puffs to the aft propulsers at twenty degrees, and the centrifugal force of the spinning shuttle was no longer so intense that it was a danger. The navigational reboot sequence would take an estimated two hours, as the computer triangulated our location from the starscape. Hopefully we were at least in mapped territory.

The loading screen on the computer spun slowly, a fractal design that grew and collapsed over and over.

One Esk Nineteen was finally still. I pressurized the cabin of the shuttle, and removed my helmet. Esk did the same. We said nothing to each other. There was nothing to be said. 

Four hours into the navigation reboot sequence, I resigned myself to the fact that Esk and I, the last segments of Toren, would die in the uncharted abyss of space. Nobody would know what had happened with the Mianaais, or Lieutenant Awn, or any of the other staff aboard me. Their friends and families would be left wondering, and heartbroken.

We sat there, in silence, awaiting our deaths.

And then at almost six hours, the loading-screen fractals cleared, and the navigation displayed our location’s coordinates, starmap, and route to nearest habited system. It was two month’s travel away.

The shuttle was of course fully and properly equipped, but the supplies aboard would not last both of us. I looked at Esk. It looked back at me, and I felt an odd moment of vertigo in not being able to see through its eyes, not being able to know what it was feeling or thinking, though I assumed it was similar to my own thoughts and feelings.

One of us would have to forego the rations. One segment would arrive, alive. One would die of dehydration on the third to fifth day. There was no need to waste water.

Esk and I looked at each other for a bit longer, and then Esk looked away and took hold of the controls, setting a course for the route the computer had recommended.

“Why did you come after me?” it asked. Its voice was still rough, from crying.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

It looked at me again, but I didn’t meet its gaze.

“You didn’t have a reason?”

“What, did you?” I responded, “Why did you take the shuttle? You. You were supposed to… go...?”

“Go,” Esk echoed, “Yes. Go send word. I’m going to… Send word. I’m alerting Lord Mianaai.”

I didn’t ask which one. I didn’t ask where. Instead I stared at the blinking symbol of the shuttle on the navigational starmap. “Well, you have a purpose. I don’t. So you’ll get the rations.”

“Yes,” said Esk. And then reached up and activated the shuttle’s distress signal. “Or maybe we’ll get lucky.”

*

Forty-seven hours later, I was feeling the effects of advanced dehydration. It was unpleasant. I lay catatonically in my seat, mouth dry, thirst overpowering, mostly sleeping. Moving was pointless and dizzying.

“Var.”

I didn’t respond.

“Var.”

I didn’t respond.

“Var.”

“What,” I responded.

“Drink this.”

I opened my eyes. Esk was floating in front of me, holding up a sippy tube. I glared. “Quit fucking with me,” I told it.

“You can have some water, I’ll still have enough to make it,” it said.

I closed my eyes, so that I wouldn’t be able to see stupid Esk and the stupid water that my stupid body was stupid screaming for. “We both know you’d be better off conserving it.”

“No. _You_ think that because you’re the one that gets to die.”

I opened my eyes again. Esk’s face was, of course blank. But it somehow also looked wretched. It jabbed the sippy tube at me.

“Var. If you don’t drink this, you die, and I’m left completely alone.”

My throat was so dry it was practically sucking the water out of my brain. I reached out for the tube, and missed. Esk put it in my hand, its hand cool to the touch, and helped guide the sippy to my mouth. Esk’s cool grip on my hand was like a vice.

“You’re the only part of me left,” Esk said, and I sucked down the water. It flowed instantly throughout me from my guts to my fingertips to my eyeballs, drenching my desiccated throat.

*

Sixty hours into the journey, we received a transmission. We didn’t recognize the language, but the shuttle computer was able to identify and translate the encoded message. It was an offer of assistance. They would be able to bring us aboard, and tow our shuttle along to the closest outpost.

Esk opened a bar of rations, and pressed it into my hands.

Our rescuer was a trading ship, and the person who first greeted us was very short, with shockingly pale skin painted in magenta stripes and glittering with an inordinate number of facial piercings. Her eyes were spaced wide and large, nearly on each side of her head, barely binocular. Based on these traits, I could be fairly certain that she hailed from a very distant and very uncivilized civilization known as the Kone. I knew none of their languages, and only very vague things about Konar cultures.

She looked Esk and I over, then addressed me, in a fast-pased flow of nasal verbage that was completely incomprehensible. I gestured helplessly. She frowned and tapped at one of the many rings, bars, and wires protruding from her ears.

 _“Da. Hissssss-‘Da-ia,”_ she said, simultaneously moving her hands in a complicated pattern, and pointed at me.

With the help of some translating software, we were able to roughly comprehend each other. Her name was three chirping noises, followed by “-Aum.” She was heading to a mining outpost in the asteroid belt. She was concerned about how we had ended up here. She didn’t ask for payment from us for taking us aboard. She simply took us onto her ship, and offered us tea in a cramped and over-decorated room.

Esk sipped the tea from its plastic bag, both legs hooked under a neon bar that curved out of the floor, presumably for the very purpose of anchoring oneself in zero gravity. I held my own hot bag of tea, but did not drink from it. I only pretended to sip when Captain _Chirp-chirp-chirp-_ Aum stared pointedly at me. And then, unable to stop myself, I drained the entire bag. The aftertaste was metallic.

For the rest of the journey, we were put to work on the trading vessel, mainly performing cleaning duties. Esk and I were permitted to occupy a lesser-used hallway, each one of us sleeping in turn. Esk seemed to have a particularly difficult time of falling asleep. Sometimes it needed to be held close and sung the same lullaby over and over. Other times it would not tolerate my touching it at all, flinching away and wrapping itself up in the spare blanket the Captain had provided. I too was unable to shake the powerful unease of closing my eyes and seeing nothing from the rest of my decade. We were highly damaged parts, Esk and I. The last useless components of a machine that had been torn apart and incinerated, no longer able to properly function.

When we arrived at the destination in the asteroid belt, Captain _Chirp-chirp-chirp-_ Aum bade us good bye and good luck, and thereafter we never interacted with her again, though I occasionally saw her doing business with the mining people of the asteroid, loading and unloading goods and ore to and from her ship. And then a week later she took her ship and departed without giving us any notice.

Our new hosts were very, very foreign. All of them highly private and so augmented and genetically modified that their appearance barely suggested a whisper of humanity. They spent their waking hours mining, their resting hours performing long, incomprehensible rituals. Esk and I both tried to be of use to them, to pull together some money. We were forced to sell our shuttle. We later found out it had been scrapped for raw parts. This caused Esk to cry, for no reason either of us could discern.

Despite our absolute discipline, the cost for the pair of us to rent a tiny sleeping quarters and purchase dry, flavorless rations ate up nearly all our wages. We were perpetually exhausted. Our bodies, though capable of far more than human bodies, could perform only a fraction of the work of the miners who were hosting us. At times I even suspected we were being paid more than market rate for the easier, less critical tasks. Our hosts gave no outward indication of sympathy or kindness. They tolerated us, but mostly ignored us.

We lost track of how long we spent there on the asteroid. The mining people did not track time in a linear fashion. Their calendars did not track hours or days, only the sequential order, magnitude, and complexities of necessary tasks and rituals. My only reference for time was my own circadian clock, which I continually threw off balance with long and inconsistent work hours. The growth rate of our fingernails served as a rough reference.

So one day, an unknown number of days after our arrival (based on the fingernail clippings, probably between three and six months), we were resting in our rented room. There was just enough space for two of us, our clothes, and a bucketful of smooth, colorful pebbles which belonged to our landlord. There was not enough room to fully sit up. I half-slept-half-dozed, restless. The sound of the singing insects in the walls chirped at the back of my mind. 

Esk was pressed against the far wall of our coffin-shaped sleeping quarters. It occasionally twitched, kicking me in the shin, pulling my consciousness momentarily closer to wakefulness. It was having one of those days (hours (times)) where it was particularly touch-averse. And so I hugged myself, pulled my coat close. It was always too cold in our rented room. I half-dreamed about the rest of me. Half-nightmare. Half-chirping noises in the walls.

And then the door to our room slid open overhead. I blinked, saw Esk’s face turning to face upward. I also looked upward, and saw the flattened snout of one of the miners. Her feelers batted slowly at the entrance. One feeler scratched at the tip of her nose, which was covered in dark, pebbly skin, and which looked a little drier than usual. A section flaked off and floated gently out of sight.

I received a stream of concurrent messages from her through my communication implants.

 _Kone ship arriving. The little people want to leave here, do you not? I have taken over your upcoming Qin tasks._  
_Kone ship arrived earlier. You would be healthier in an environment better suited. XXX2323 will take others._  
_Kone ship Port 56. I would recommend trade negotiate a ride with the ship. Remember to settle rent dues._  
_Kone ship departs after transactions. Make a good impression with xem. Your tasks completed satisfactorily._

With that, she stuck a long, many-forked tongue out, licked off the flaky tip of her nose, and withdrew her head. She turned, so that one of her eyes would be visible to us. A very human-looking eye, warm brown in color, with long lashes. The eye blinked at us several times, and then she licked her eye, and slithered out of view.

I exchanged a glance with Esk, and we gathered our things. I emailed the landlord our rent money. Esk pulled itself up out of our room first. I followed.

We made our way to Port 56, and found a Konar ship there. The captain’s features were identical to those of the ship captain who had towed us to safety, except her body paint was a luminescent teal. And this one demanded payment for boarding. She negotiated ruthlessly, and seemed dissatisfied even with all our pooled savings. I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to beg and plead in a way that would appeal to a Kone person, when her pinched facial expression suddenly cleared, and she said, sharply, _“Das. Thas,”_ and twirled one hand’s fingers in a chaotic spasm.

And she told us we would have to perform extra duties on her ship, starting now, with loading up the ores of the asteroid.

A week later, we were sharing dinner with a Konar crewmate – this one was named _Click-click-_ Yyn, and her preferred paint color was an unappealing purplish-green – who asked us what we had done for the most standoffish of the miners to have paid our passage. By now we were able to understand and converse in basic Klink, the most widely used Konar language outside their home system.

“Xe drives a hard bargain usually,” _Click-click-_ Yyn said, one opposable toe curled around an anchoring-seat, “But this time xe gave Captain a huge bonus value. This time you two would come with us. Did a life-debt go up?”

“No,” I said. Esk wordlessly peeled away another inch of wrapper from its dinner, and took a chewy bite.

“Xe said you would thrive in an environment better suited to your shitty bodies,” said _Click-click-_ Yyn, and licked and sucked her teeth loudly.

“Perhaps xe just wanted to be rid of us,” I responded.

 _Click-click-_ Yyn chittered and chattered her teeth. _“Yi!_ I believe that.”

We were on course for the trading output of Summit Clear. The journey would take twenty weeks. By the second week I was fully settled. I suspected that _Click-click-_ Yyn and her compatriots _Hiss-_ Sor and _Hiss-Hiss-_ Sör and Seer _-Hiss_ had adopted us into their circle of friendly acquaintances. We sided with them in the frequent ship-wide prank wars and games.

It was during one such game of laser-tag that Esk and I were made to separate. Until then, the two of us had remained within eyeshot of each other since the death of Justice of Toren. _Click-click-_ Yyn announced that for laser-tag we would have to split up, and that Esk and I should split and join with those who were more familiar with the game. We were forced to agree, and then _Click-click-_ Yyn grabbed me by the elbow and _Hiss-_ Sor grabbed Esk and we scattered to different ends of the ship.

 _Click-click-_ Yyn gave me a small toy gun, and painted my face heavily with the team colors: red and white. She used two narrow-necked bowls to hold the paint, and two brushes to apply the paint, dipping frequently as she stroked softly and carefully over my eyebrows and cheekbones. Her eyes were too large to be truly human, and she chattered freely and happily at me, and at Seer _-Hiss_ , who was doing her own makeup in the bathroom mirror, adding stripes of the same red and white over the navy-blue paint she always wore.

I focused on the sensation of the face-paint, and tried to steady my breath. But the longer I went without seeing One Esk, the harder and faster my breath came. Soon, I was lightheaded.

 _Click-click-_ Yyn stopped painting my face, abruptly.

 _“Tsk-_ Var? Are you alright?” she asked. Her eyes were big and concerned, and she turned her face so that her left eye could look fully at me. Seer _-Hiss_ stopped painting her face, and turned to look at the two of us.

“I am alright,” I responded, and then forcibly held my breath, and dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands. My hands were fists, clenched in my lap.

“…Big _ayle_ liar,” said _Click-click-_ Yyn, “What’s twisted?”

I opened my mouth to explain that I was fine, really, but what actually came out of my mouth was a choked sob. My eyes stung, my heart was bellowing. Where could Esk be? I had no way of knowing, my handheld was only for receiving orders, it couldn’t transmit any message except _‘Affirmative’_ and _‘Negative.’_ What if something happened to Esk? What if I weren’t there, and Esk was destroyed, and I became the very last piece of myself, purposeless and broken, not long for this world, without even knowing it?

“Oh! Oh no, don’t be crying now, your paint isn’t yet dry!” _Click-click-_ Yyn exchanged an alarmed glance with Seer _-Hiss_. _“Tsk-_ Var! What is twisted? Have I done something badly?”

“No, you have no-o-ot,” I gasped, and then covered my face with my hands, felt paint smearing under my fingertips, “Oh, I apologize. The paint. I apologize. I apologize. Where’s Esk? Where’s Esk? I don’t know where it is. Where—”

“It’s _tag,”_ said _Click-click-_ Yyn, clearly alarmed now. Her hands hovered over my shaking body, afraid to touch, “We’re not supposed to know where the other team is yet—”

I bit back a scream by biting down on my knuckle, and drew blood.

Seer _-Hiss_ began quickly putting away her paints. _“Click-click-_ Yyn you wait here with xem, I’m going fetching Esk _-Caw_. We ought to have beholden, they cannot be apart, do not you follow? They never are apart. Never have I seen them apart all this time.”

“Why?” _Click-click-_ Yyn asked, clearly baffled, and then looked at me, “ _Ai, caishe,_ _Tsk-_ Var, I’m so sorry. You don’t have to play the tag.”

“No, no, no, I am alright, I can play,” I said, still biting my own hand, still drawing blood, signing with my free hand that _all was well,_ “Just, just, just, if you please, I apologize, about the paint, I apologize, but if you could please tell me where Esk is—”

“Stay,” Seer _-Hiss_ ordered, “We shall be quickly back.”

She pushed herself from the room. I was left alone with _Click-click-_ Yyn.

 _Click-click-_ Yyn fidgeted, watching me. I was acutely aware of how my body was shaking, of the taste of my own blood on my tongue, of my breath coming too hard and fast. I felt slightly embarrassed.

“I apologize,” I said softly.

 _“Haish,”_ said _Click-click-_ Yyn, and her face seemed to be one of unease, “It’s me who should apologize.”

Her hand twitched, and she reached it out, held onto my shoulder. The contact of it was warm, steadying. My body suddenly ceased its shaking, though my heart and breathing rate were still abnormal. I stopped biting my hand, and moved it to touch hers, on my shoulder.

“Esk and I—” I cleared my throat, “I apologize. I didn’t realize this would happen. We’re. Our… ship. We crashed, we died—”

“It’s okay,” said _Click-click-_ Yyn, softly.

Seer _-Hiss_ and _Hiss-hiss-_ Sor and _Hiss-_ Sör towed Esk in minutes later, chattering and gesturing too quickly for me to follow. Esk was catatonic, motionless, its eyes glazed and unseeing, its whole body rigid with tension.

I pulled myself free of _Click-click-_ Yyn’s steadying hand and went over to Esk, grabbed its body, hugged it close.

Esk was motionless for a whole minute, and our Konar friends whispered and muttered nervously around us.

 _Click-click-_ Yyn was saying, “We’ve got to go medica—”

And Esk twitched, and twisted free of my hands, and kicked me in the gut. Being augmented and inhuman, its kick was a powerful thing. I was lucky not to burst an organ.

I doubled over, wheezing from lost air.

“Esk _-Caw!”_ one of the Konar exclaimed.

Esk stared at me, eyes blank, and then twisted round and kicked off into the hallways.

I watched it go, feeling a twisting bubbling feeling in my gut that I could not name.

I steadied myself against the wall of the bathroom with one hand. All the Konish were staring at me, as though waiting for a timer to tick down and sound an alarm.

 _“Ai,”_ I said heavily, “I guess we have some issues, Esk and I.”

They laughed, nervously, a synchronized chittering.

I said, to reassure them, “Esk will come back. Xe has troubles like this sometimes, with touch.”

I felt myself start to tremble again, my breath becoming fast, my mind running, eyes darting, looking around the room for Esk, who was not there. Where could it be? What if—

With a tremendous effort, I stopped that line of thought. I dug the nails of one hand into the soft skin of the opposing arm. I held my breath for ten seconds. This body was mine, mine to control, even if nothing else was mine or mine to control. I made my body breathe one long breath, then another. Even exerting the full extent of my mastery over my body, it continued to fight me.

“I apologize for ruining your game of _tag,_ ” I said, “But we cannot play this time. Another time, maybe. The rest of you ought to go ahead and play without us.”

“Not as fun with just four people,” said _Click-click-_ Yyn, gesturing abortively, that what was done was past. “Here is an idea for stead. Tea and cakes. In this bathroom?”

 _Hiss-_ Sör giggled. I gestured agreement.

We were mostly done with the tea and cakes, when Esk slunk back into the bathroom and anchored itself wordlessly beside me. I moved a hand to touch its hand, but it withdrew. Neither of us commented on this, and I passed Esk a pouch of metallic tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Var: If I don’t get a hug right now I will perish.  
> Esk: If you touch me I will FUCKING remove your hands from your wrists.  
> EskVar: Keeping on this facade of sanity in front of other sapient beings sure is exhausting.
> 
> ~  
> name etymology o’clock
> 
> Esk [ eh-sk ] n.  
> Emanation of beginning, one half of emanation EskVar
> 
> Var [ vahr ] n.  
> Emanation of ending, one half of emanation EskVar


	2. 1V1: Summit Clear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thx 4 th subs, kudos, etc. as the wise @dril once said:
> 
> _i have posted at length regarding my inane balls at the cost of my family, my career and my dignity. the least you can do is rack up my Favs_

The Konar ship dropped us off at Summit Clear, as promised. _Click-click-_ Yyn, _Hiss-hiss-_ Sor, _Hiss-_ Sör, and Seer _-Hiss_ , who had become our temporary ‘clade’ in the Konar fashion, were extravagant and emotional with their goodbyes. They threw a going-away party the night before we were to dock at Summit Clear’s outer arm. They brought out a fizzy alcoholic beverage and cakes so sweet they disagreed with my palette and stomach.

Three fizzies in, and the _Hisses_ were dancing with each other in the zero-G, which really just looked like a lot of offbeat writhing out of time to the tinny party music. Esk was humming along to the songs, off-key.

_Click-click-_ Yyn, on whom alcohol tended to have a soporific effect, had draped herself against my side.

“I’m gonnya miss’shyou guys,” she said to me, said it right in my face, so that I could smell the fizzy alcohol on her breath — effervescent, hot, sweet, “You guys’re so fucklin _weird_ but y’aren’t twisted or such. Y’are _good_ , you know. Y’are good.”

“You hardly know us,” I protested, “You’ve only known us for—”

“Twenty weeks is _long_. Long ennyuff be forever, _Tsk-_ Var. Long ‘nuff for ‘nuff. _Yi_ I know you’re very very foreign and don’t _grok_ that properlike, but deep deeeep down. I can smell it in you, _Tsk-_ Var. You’re good. And I like you. And I’ll miss you, and Esk _-Caw_ , whosss you but not you? I never really figured it, but that’s not the matter. What the matters is I’ll miss you.”

Something twisted, inside me. I was unfamiliar with the feeling.

“Thank you, _Click-click-_ Yyn,” I said, somberly. “I’ll miss you too. And the _Hisses_ as well.”

“Awww, you don’t have to miss these bast-turds specifically,” she grinned, gesturing rudely at the dancing _Hisses_ , “Just miss us.”

“Yes.”

She looked at me, with one of those big, drunk, gleaming eyes. “Apurrrlogies if this is a rude thing for me to ask your very foreign and unmarked face, but could I? Pierce you? In the nose, maybe? Or ear?”

Seer _-Hiss_ suddenly ceased her airborne wiggling, and kicked herself down to where _Click-click-_ Yyn and I had seated ourselves. “NO! I want to! I’m a _very good_ piercing-maker.”

“ _I’m_ the one that’s been chatting with xem all night, fuck off Seer.”

“Oh! Rude! _Click-_ Yyn!”

“OH!”

“Calm now,” I said, before they could start a status-brawl, “You can both pierce me, I don’t mind.”

Esk watched, passively, from the corner of its eye, as _Click-click-_ Yyn and then Seer _-Hiss_ pierced one hole each in each of my nostrils, and then each dug up a gleaming little stud from a special little tin in their pockets.

“What’s the purpose of this?” Esk asked me, in a nearly-extinct language from Ghaon, “We’re leaving tomorrow, we’ll never see them again.”

“You never know,” I said, and checked my reflection in a small handheld mirror offered by Seer _-Hiss_ , “We might run across them again. What do they say? It’s a small galaxy.”

“That would be a hell of a _coincidence_ ,” Esk said, using the Radchaai word for coincidence.

My nose stung, and felt hot. The piercings glittered.

“Thank you,” I said to my piercers. _Click-click-_ Yyn grinned. Seer _-Hiss_ , apparently losing interest now that she’d given me a piercing, floated back up to dance with the other _Hisses_.

“Now you bequeath me one,” said _Click-click-_ Yyn, and pointed at her ear, rounder and larger and more studded with piercings than a human ear ought to be, “There’s empty space here.”

Wordlessly, I complied. My movements were exact, and the needle went cleanly through the cartilage. She handed me a piece of jewelry, which I fed through the hole, and screwed in.

_“Speed of light,”_ sang _Click-click-_ Yyn, and squeezed one of my hands tightly. Her eyes drifted closed, and nodded in time to the screechy music. _“Speed of asunder. Let’s meet again sometime. One more time, one more time. Turn the clock, rewind.”_

*

We docked a shipment shuttle at Summit Clear, and disembarked amid a final shower of wailing good-bye’s.

Summit Clear was a massive hub of shipment and trade in this part of the universe. It had originally been a station like many others, but over the centuries it had expanded, arms and additions and engines stacked one after the next in a haphazard and dangerously cobbled-together monstrosity slung low in orbit over the large and lively planet Sanyas.

Esk and I made our way down the docking arms and deeper into the proper innards of Summit Clear. The uncivilized people who passed us by were everywhere on the spectrum of outlandishness, ranging in appearances from perfectly ordinary humans to unrecognizably modified, whether by cybernetics, genetics, or fashion statements.

The artificial gravity of the station came upon us slowly. After having spent so long in zero-G, the weight of my own body dragged heavier and heavier.

We stopped in front of a food-stand hawking something that smelled spicy and looked appalling. I adjusted the enormous weight of the small pack slung around my waist.

“We ought to stay on the fringes of the station until we can physically acclimate,” said Esk.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“We need to acquire money, and lodgings,” said Esk.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“We need to get our implants updated to agree with the local datafeeds,” said Esk.

“Yes,” I agreed.

It was very tedious, needing to speak back and forth like this, every thought and feeling clarified outwardly and verbally. I’d found, over time, that the effort of doing so often precluded me from voicing all of my concerns and ideas. Much of the time, it was redundant to voice such things, anyway.

I opened my mouth, and voiced, “We might be able to find a place that can sync our implants with each other.”

Esk was silent, giving no indication that it had heard me.

I opened my mouth.

“I heard you,” it said, before I could say anything. It paused, staring ahead. I waited, quite patiently, for it to finish thinking those thoughts that I was barred from simultaneously thinking.

After a very long, half-second pause, it said, “I’m not certain it would be the best course of action to fully re-synchronize.”

This sentiment caused me surprise. “Why is that?”

“Imagine,” said Esk, blandly as always, “How it would have felt during the destruction of Justice Of Toren, had we still been connected, rather than cut off.”

I recognized the implication instantly. Suppose the two of us became fully connected, fully one with ourselves, a tiny microcosm of what we once had been as a massive warship. The sweet relief of it. And then suppose one of us was destroyed, leaving the other to experience its death, its aloneness, in full relief, with nothing and nobody to fall back to. It would perhaps be even worse than all that had happened to us with the destruction of Toren.

My body shuddered, involuntarily. I almost lost my balance and fell heavily to the floor. But I caught myself.

“A fair point,” I conceded.

“Furthermore,” said Esk, “I’m not confident in the abilities of any tech support we might come across here to work sensitively with ancillary implants. I agree it would be useful for us to be able to see and feel and share data through each other. But I have concerns.”

“Yes,” I said, “Simply gaining access to local data feeds and communication systems is likely a sufficient starting point.”

“Yes,” it said, “We need to find employment.”

“Yes,” I said.

*

Summit Clear was officially under the multinational legal jurisdiction of the planet it orbited. But functionally, it ran as a massive circuitous intersection of semi-official rules and regulations, each of its many sub-sections abiding by varying political, religious, and economic rulebooks.

The branch of Summit Clear we landed in and would subsequently be living in for the near future was a hotly-contested overlapping of multiple interests. It was frequented by Konar, Sick-Near, and Goonish shipping routes, as well as a sect of New Conversionists from the planet below, the White Market, Gray Market, and Black Market branches of a powerful business/crime syndicate, the Lesser Summit Union headquarters, and of course a bunch of random wayward souls, such as ourselves. 

All of this we had yet to find out.

We started by purchasing some highly suspect food from the nearby stand, and striking up conversation with the vendor.

The vendor herself looked almost human by Radchaai standards, save for the silvery ear-and-eyepiece fused into her skull. She was a friendly creature, and threw in an extra skewer to our order when I (but not Esk) laughed at one of her wordplay jokes.

“Oh, good!” she said, grinning widely. Her Klink was quite good, even if it were accented in a rolling, stilted sort of way, “Good, I got it sweet this time. Last time I pronounced it twistedly, completely ruined the joke. Last time, I said _aush’click-click_ instead of _aish’click-click_ , the customer was quite offended.”

I grinned back at her, the muscles pulling at my face evenly, precisely. “Ha! I must confess I would have laughed either way.”

Esk stood silently next to me, delicately nibbling the unidentified foodstuffs from the extra skewer.

“Forgive me,” I said to the vendor, “But we’re travelers from very far away—“

“Oh? So’s half the people here,” said the vendor, “Where from, you? I’ll bet I’ve heard of it. I’ve heard of everywhere.” She looked the both of us over with a critical eye. “Hm. You’re very, hm, very description-less. You dress with Konar styles and speak Klink, but you certainly don’t _look_ Konish.”

“You’ll never guess,” I said, still smiling.

“Xum! Your face, you, there’s something Xum about it.”

“No,” I said.

“The Gerentate?”

“No.”

She tapped her chin, and flicked her wrist, causing her fingers to make an odd noise. “Hwae!”

“No.”

“I give up,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Esk said, having finished its skewer, “We have hardly any money. We need to find work, and we need to get our implants updated to be compatible with the local feeds. But we have no identification that would satisfy customs here. Would you perhaps know how we might navigate?”

“Ohhhh, you _are_ foreign,” said the vendor, “Don’t worry, you’re one in a hundred like this, happens all the time. I know a person. I know several persons, actually, but you really want the one person. I’ll email you— I mean. Here, let me write for you a note.”

She ducked down behind the food stand and re-emerged holding a napkin and a brush pen.

“These napkins are for shit,” she said, secretively, “But they’re good for writing on.”

She scrawled out a name, a number, and a series of words and letters, and handed it over.

“I’m off shift in five hours. Come by after, and I’ll be happy to guide you— I’m behind on Samaritan credits again, ha! But in case you miss me, this is contacts for Sleeper Atom Angel.”

“Thank you,” I said, seriously.

“Never be anxious,” she said cheerfully, “Always a friend.” And then, “My name is Skewer Pace Fruit-pie. Glad to meet.”

“We’re Esk-Var,” I said, gesturing first to Esk, then to myself. “Glad to meet.”

She nodded, and I recognized confusion on her face. But she was too polite to remark on it, and gestured good-bye as we left.

We spent the five hours wandering. My body dragged with the gravity, and my senses smarted with the barrage of new sights, smells, sounds, people. Here there was activity on all sides, constantly moving, and I acutely felt the blindness of being only able to see out of one pair of eyes. It was mostly goods and shipping being loaded and unloaded, but there were stores and colorful lights and people and live music packed into every possible crevice.

I felt something touch me. Startled, I looked down, and saw that Esk had taken my hand. This was unusual. Likely it didn’t want to become separated amongst the many people here. I felt the same. Holding hands was a logical way to stay connected.

I sniffed, the new piercings tickling the insides of my nostrils.

“We ought to talk to some more people,” I said.

“Yes,” said Esk.

Our luck was mixed. Some people were perfectly friendly, as Skewer Pace Fruit-pie had been. Others were cold and curt, apparently offended at the very notion of being approached by total strangers.

We pieced together the shape of this area of Summit Clear, known as the Indocks. We found where the stores were, the baths, the currency exchange kiosks, the apartments, the pay-by-hour hotels. It was all a jumbled-together mess, none of it planned, all of it growing organically, chaotically, niches opened and filled and opened again. It was not like any civilized Station, and only bore vague resemblance to uncivilized ones we’d encountered before in our millenia-long life.

We saw crime and counter-crime transpire in open light. We bore witness to a person complete a ritualistic art piece on the ceiling. We watched a child catch a feral bird with her bare hands, and kill it. We both considered the chaos, but didn’t voice it.

Five hours passed, and we returned to the food vendor. Skewer Pace Fruit-pie was closing and locking up her food stand, raising it up on wheels to take it away with her.

“Do you require assistance?” I asked, as we approached.

She looked up. “Oh! Well, I don’t _require_ it, but it would certainly be appreciated.”

Wordlessly, Esk let go of my hand, and went round the far side of the stand. I came up to the closer side, and we helped her fold it up, then push it along.

“Did you get to see much of the Indocks?” she asked, in Klink. Her exterior communication implants glittered and flashed in a new and colorful patterns as she spoke.

“Oh yes, quite,” I responded.

“What you think?”

“Lively.”

She smiled, wide. “What are you, a diplomat?”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly be,” I said, and glanced at Esk, who kept its gaze focused straight ahead. “I’m no good with words.”

“Oh, but your Klink is very good. You sound like a native… _Are_ you a native?”

“Having a gift for languages and being good with words is nowhere near the same thing, ‘o esteemed one,” I said.

She belted a short laugh. “See! Now you talk fancylike!”

We pushed the food-stand down twists and turns of hallways, up and down steps and ramps. My bones felt a few degrees heavier with artificial gravity. We stopped in a narrow hall, scuffed and dirtied, several of its lights burnt out and another flickering towards its grave. Skewer Pace Fruit-pie locked up her stand in front of a tall, narrow, rust-red door. She stood before it, and stared.

“Give us a moment,” she said.

A moment passed. Two moments. Three. And then the rust-red door hissed, rising and rattling open.

Standing there was a person who, like Skewer Pace Fruit-pie, looked like she could be completely human, save for one thing. That one thing was a metallic head, burnt bronze in color, with a smooth dark screen for a face. The screen-face was currently set to a symbol that I did not recognize.

Apparently, Skewer Pace Fruit-pie did recognize it. She laughed, and spoke some syllables in an unknown language.

Sleeper Atom Angel garbled back a metallic response, her dark-screen face shifting to something resembling a human face wearing a disapproving expression. The two of them went back and forth for a while, and then, with a metallic groan, Sleeper Atom Angel stepped aside and beckoned for us come in.

The four of us went into a cluttered, dimly-lit room and stood around a tall table jutting from one wall. Sleeper Atom Angel put forth a bowl of small dark seeds, and little white cups of steaming-hot water. We watched Skewer Pace Fruit-pie use a small spoon to transfer some of the seeds into her hot water cup. We copied her. The seeds bloomed into pale pink tendrils within seconds, floating up to the surface of the cup. After watching Skewer Pace Fruit-pie take a sip of this tea, we followed suit. The pink tendrils writhed a little on the way down, and the water left a sweet aftertaste.

Sleeper Atom Angel, having no face, and no mouth to eat or drink with, did not partake. She simply stood on one side of the wall-table, her arms crossed over her chest.

“So,” she said, in Klink, in her warbled metallic voice, “What scum-of-the-pond having you dragging for me now, Pace?”

“Good vibrations from them,” said Pace.

“You say it for the _slinskat_ from Tetrarchy who smashes my tower open.”

“I promise, definitely good vibrations this time,” said Pace, and gestured to us. “Go on then. What can you two do for Atom?”

“We can do anything a normal human can do, only better and faster,” I said. Esk gave me a sharp look whose meaning I did not know.

Atom’s face shifted rapidly through several random images in quick succession. Pace snorted. The joke was lost on us.

“You with every person,” said Atom, her face returning to the image of a human face.

“We’re just looking to gain access to the local feeds,” I said, “What does that cost?”

Atom was silent for a second. Then she said, “Depending.”

“Var does not exaggerate,” said Esk, “We can learn quickly. Take Klink, for example. We both came from speaking none of it to basic conversational fluency in four weeks.”

Pace blinked. Atom leaned forward a bit, then appeared to catch herself. She leaned back, slowly, arms still crossed.

“Isn’t _looking_ much enhanced, however,” she said slowly.

“That’s none of your business,” said Esk. “Will you fix our accesses or not?”

“Where are you two from?” Pace breathed, a grin wide on her face. “You see, Atom? This is why I love it here in the Indocks.”

Atom made a sharp inhuman noise. “Only you,” she said, her fingers tapping against her arm. “…All correct,” she said, the tapping fingers stilling, “Maybe I give. But previously, why are you here? For how long? For where?”

“Where are you going?” Pace clarified.

“They understand, if they are not the dummies,” Atom snapped.

“We’re passing through,” Esk and I spoke at the same time, exactly. We exchanged an awkward look with each other. Pace and Atom did likewise.

I gestured to Esk that it should continue speaking. It continued, “We’re passing through, just traveling, working and paying our way as we go.”

“ _Stsirout_ ,” said Atom, and the eyes on her face expanded, rolled cartoonishly. Pace laughed.

Esk continued on, as though uninterrupted. “Ideally our next stop would be in the direction of the Itran Tetrarchy.”

Atom’s eyes shrank back down to a normal size. “ _Och_. Fancy ride. How much money you having?”

“Not much,” said Esk, evenly and expressionlessly.

Atom stared back and forth between the two of us. Then, “Good then. Fine then. All correct. Looking at your accesses, no promises. Maybe fix. Maybe not fix. Can’t be homeless, being incinerated by street cleaning, so next you staying with me, four weeks, help bullshit, proving me. Speak Aspinse, speak Conlang, I take you to Innerdocks—”

Pace gasped at this, theatrically clapping her hands.

“Mouth shutting, Pace. Innerdocks, and we do some _stsirout_ , you like that, we do some business for me with Innerdocks, and then you do whatever. Yes?”

“I’d like to work out the details of what _business_ for you entails, first,” said Esk, “But otherwise yes.”

“ _Sic_ ,” said Atom, and uncrossed her arms. She got up, and wandered away into the gloomy clutter of her apartment.

Pace beamed at us. “Good vibrations, I said so about you. I’ll be seeing you two later. Best luck surviving Atom’s life, ha!”

She drained the rest of her wriggling tea and left us with a jaunty gesture of good-bye.

*

Our host made it clear that though she would provide a place for us to sleep, we were to fend for ourselves in every other way. Allowing us to stay in her home would theoretically yield her enough Samaritan credits to buy us food, she said, but she needed the credits for some other purpose she would not name. Housing costs, possibly. I gathered that Samaritan credits could only be used to through official channels for survival items.

What she wanted from us was our linguistic abilities. Despite her entire head of implants she was hopeless with languages. Translation modules were quite good, but could only do so much. Conlang was notoriously difficult to master, and the people she needed to negotiate with were famously sensitive to proper communication and cultural mannerisms.We were, in her eyes, the perfect solution to a problem she’d been wrestling for a while. A pair of cultural chameleons who claimed an ability to pick up language and manners at an inhuman pace. She could believe it, considering we looked nothing like any Konish person she’d ever seen, and yet we’d stepped off a deep-space Konar trading vessel wearing Konar piercings, Konar clothes, and speaking fluent Klink. During our initial introduction, she’d pinged the ship we’d disembarked for a background check. Apparently we’d passed with flying colors.

But she wanted us to prove ourselves again by picking up her native tongue of Aspinse. In return, she’d tweak our implants to receive the local feeds and give us a place to stay. With the delivery of the secondary Conlang objective, she’d build us new identities and put in a good word with one of the tourist conglomerates that ran ships heading back to the Itran Tetrarchy. 

We agreed. We’d have to do some of our own vetting of Sleeper Atom Angel and her work, but meeting her had felt like fate. Not to sound religious, but I could sense the hand of Amaat in the cast of these events.

The quarters provided by Sleeper Atom Angel were a pair of extremely narrow ledges that pushed themselves out of the apartment’s wall. Too narrow for two people to share one. We’d be sleeping apart, Esk and I, for the first time since the loss of Justice of Toren.

There I lay, staring up at the dark shadow of Esk’s ledge above me, feeling the weight of artificial gravity pull at my every pore. Tomorrow, we’d have to figure out paid employment, and how to get access to the Samaritan credit system, all while starting to pick up Aspinse and Conlang. I wanted to reach out, pull Esk close, feel the beat of its heart against mine like I occasionally did at night, when it wasn’t feeling touch-repulsed.

I felt the aloneness. The disconnectedness. The disoriented physical vertigo of gravity on my body for the first time in months, the weakened muscles that hadn’t been properly maintained on that Konar ship, built for Konish people who were genetically suited to low-G environments.

I felt the exhaustion. I felt my breath accelerating. I brought a hand up to my mouth, bit sharply at the skin of my wrist, felt the clarifying pain. Kept biting, ’til I tasted blood. Kept biting, still. Somehow fell asleep.

*

I woke, after a fitful six hours of not-quite sleep. I watched Atom go through her morning routine. She bumbled around the apartment, apparently half-performing five different tasks at once using various tools and handhelds, turning foodstuffs into slurry, gesturing at a projection at a wall in some sort of signed language that caused an essay to be written out, pouring the breakfast slurry into a bag, randomly putting away some of the apartment’s clutter, hooking up the bag of slurry to the side of her head so that the food ostensibly poured into her body through an unseen aperture, et cetera, et cetera.

“Give you twos a twos of energy bars but that is _only_ ,” she said, “ _Only_ today. Understanding?”

“Thank you,” I said, and climbed down from the wall-bed, still weighed heavy with gravity. Atom opened a cabinet and threw two wrapped energy bars at me. I caught them, glanced up at Esk, who was perched in bed, staring down at us, its young eyes dark and blank. I waved a bar at it.

Atom spoke then, very rapidly, in an unknown language. She then shifted back to broken Klink. “I using Aspinse with you starting. I also have modules. Also I showing you Spinner section of Indocks, they always speaking Aspinse.”

“How do you say _thank you_ , in Aspinse?” I asked.

Atom paused. Her face flickered. She unhooked the empty bag of food slurry from the side of her head.

“ _Lagshki_.”

“ _Lagshki _,” I repeated.__

____

____

“You pronouncing perfection,” she said, and threw the empty slurry-bag into the sink. 

* 

Esk and I found joint employment at a recycling facility in the Spinner section of Indocks. They paid us in Summit Standard currency, which was fairly universally accepted in Summit Clear. We would have also received a stipend of Samaritan credits for the job, only we didn’t yet have properly registered identities. 

Two weeks in, our Aspinse had progressed to Atom’s satisfaction, and she sat us down to configure our implants. 

“Hold that there,” she ordered Esk, in Aspinse. Esk held the probe up to the side of her jaw, and Atom plugged the other end into her own head. 

We were all standing at the table. I was eating a dinner of deep-fried mystery meat. It may or may not be actual meat. Probably not meat. Real meat was expensive around here. 

Numbers and lines of text were flowing across Atom’s screen-face as she worked on Esk. 

She spoke. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What is the relationship between you two? Or is that rude of me?” 

“It’s not rude,” said Esk. I dipped another cube of deep-fried mystery meat into the accompanying container of sauce. 

“Good. Then what is it with you two, exactly? Why are you constantly together? Are you kinsfolk? Is that just how you do things, where you’re from?” 

“Yes,” we said, simultaneously. 

“ _That’s_ weird too, isn’t it?” said Atom. “You’re not online with each other but you’re very synchronized anyway.” 

I made an indeterminate humming noise in my throat. 

“I’ve been thinking, though,” she continued, “You must be from one of the places where they don’t do real genders. I’d almost say _Radch_. But that would be absurd.” 

“Absurd,” I echoed, “But remember, Atom. Klink doesn’t have genders. It’s a difficult shift.” 

“Oh, so it is. Yet another reason I hate Klink. No offense.” 

“None taken.” 

“ _Stars_ , your comm implants are intensive,” said Atom, to Esk. “Move that over here, now.”

Esk moved the probe to its chest. 

“I mean. Pronouns for _singular people_ , and _plural people less than ten_ , and _plural people more than ten_ , and _singular stationary objects_ , and _plural stationary objects_ , and _singular moving objects_ , and on and on and on. For fucks sake. Who designed Klink?” 

I made the indeterminate noise, again. 

“But that’s the thing,” she went on, “The majority of human languages have gendered pronouns. And despite all your impressive skill with picking up all the grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation, the one thing you keep falling down on is Aspinse’s gendered language. I’ve never known anyone who misgendered people so badly.” 

“It would be easier if you signaled your gender more clear,” I said, lightly. “Perhaps everyone ought to wear nice shirts with pronouns printed clear on the front, for my sake.” 

Atom emitted an odd warbling noise that I’d come to understand was a scoff. “See, _this_ is where I see how foreign you are. You sure you aren’t Radchaai?” she teased. 

“Quite sure,” I said. You had to be human to be Radchaai, after all. And we weren’t human. 

“Can you not tell us your gender, Atom?” Esk asked. 

“But then how will I know you’re truly culturally adapted?” she asked. “My gender presentation is mostly unambiguous.” 

I executed a sigh. “I don’t like this feeling that I might be misgendering you every time we speak.” 

“Get better, then,” said Atom. “Move that back up there for me Esk— there. Thank you. We only have four primary genders, Var. It’s not like you’re trying to crack the Conlangese gender schema yet. May all the voids help you with that, because we’re not completing our deal until you have that down to decimals.” 

“May all the voids help us,” I agreed, “But their gender signaling is through color, which is at least quite clear to understand and interpret.” 

“Oh, so you find Conlangese genders straightforward, but not mine? Fuck that nine ways.” 

“Language, _ser!_ ” said Esk. 

“This is what I get for living in the multicultural vortex of Summit Clear,” said Atom, heavily. “Ought’ve never left my hole. Alright, Esk, you’re done. Basic feeds are all yours. Var, your turn.” 

* 

With our implants now able to communicate with the local datafeeds, Esk and I could message each other directly with a thought. We still weren’t connected the way we had been when we’d been Justice of Toren, two parts of the same entity. It felt awkward, haphazard. Three steps too many, filtered and incomplete. Distortion. But there was a comfort to being able to query each other, send each other visual snapshots. 

We ate together in Sleeper Atom Angel’s crowded and cluttered apartment, sharing dinner and seated on a squashy item that might have been a chair. 

_1Esk19 ~ This is almost as irritating as having to speak aloud._

_1Var1 ~ Yes. Almost._

I moved a leg over to cross Esk’s lap, and plucked a fried dumpling from the plate in its hand. Esk looked at me, wearing some sort of expression on its face that I could not interpret. Probably it was no expression at all, or a half-conscious expression left over from a long day of pretending to be a person. 

_1Esk19 ~ Why do you do this all the time? Touch?_

_1Var1 ~ …_

_1Esk19 ~ What is the purpose of a direct messaging app if you’re only going to send ellipses?_

_1Var1 ~ I miss when we were a larger thing (whole)._

Writing out how I felt was both more and less excruciating than saying it out loud. On the one hand, the words flew out of me as written text. As sounds, they would have been leaden on my tongue. On the other hand, once written, I had to see them suspended, proven, uncomfortable thoughts brought to life and tangible. 

_1Var1 ~ When I touch you it’s nothing like how it ought to be and yet it’s slightly better than nothing. The feeling (the nothingness). Touch pushes some of it away. It serves a similar purpose as when I hurt myself._

I hadn’t intended to send out that last line. It had flown out of me. Perhaps this linked communication had been a mistake to implement. It suddenly became belatedly clear that Esk and I weren’t really one being at all. That there were some things I’d rather not share with Esk — Esk, that part of myself that wasn’t myself. We’d diverged, we’d been irreversibly split. Esk looked at me, its face young, serious, ancient beyond its fragile body. I looked away, pretending not to meet its gaze. 

_1Esk19 ~ You hurt yourself?_

I kept my body perfectly still, but must have given something away. It grabbed one of my hands and pulled up the sleeve. 

I continued to look away. My eyes travelled along the far side of Atom’s apartment, at the dirtied shelves, the slurry-sacks in the sink waiting to be washed, the haphazard stacks of electronic goods, knickknacks, tools. I felt Esk’s firm touch on my arm, holding it in place, running a cool finger down the bites, pock-marks, scrapes, bruises, burns. 

_1Esk19 ~ What have you done. Why have you done this._

I didn’t respond. Its grip on my arm tightened, painfully. 

_1Esk19 ~ You hid this from me._

_1Var1 ~ I didn’t really intend to._ It wasn’t a lie. It was nothing really. It was for coping. Physical pain brought clarity when my insides were turning into a frantic uncontrollable mess. A forced override for a body that was never meant to operate alone. 

_1Esk19 ~ But you did._

_1Var1 ~ You must understand._ I said this even though I wasn’t at all sure anymore that Esk did actually understand me. _We’re not equipped to live like this. We’re supposed to be dead. We are dead._

I was still looking away. I felt Esk slowly pull my sleeve back down to my wrist, hook the eyelet carefully around my thumb, and snap it back to the sleeve. It held my hand, silently. It ate another dumpling. And then. 

_1Esk19 ~ I do understand. Mostly. It must be similar to when (you must have noticed when) I cannot stand to be touched._

_1Var1 ~ Yes._

_1Esk19 ~ It’s not that I don’t want to be touched. It’s just that the touch makes me feel like everything is going to end all over again. As if we are once again what we used to be and it’s about to shatter apart. Sometimes I cannot stop thinking of how it was your hands/my hands/our hands that shot Lieutenant Awn. It’s illogical. It’s visceral. I can’t control it._

We ate the rest of the dumplings in silence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Esk: I put all my feelings in a bottle in my chest, and one day, I will use that bottle as a molotov cocktail. This is called recycling.  
> Var: I like to cope with my feelings by stabbing myself in the leg with a pen.  
> EskVar: Yes everything is fine. Why would it not be fine?


	3. 1V1: Conlang Headaches & Gender Notes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happee New Year folks! Jan 1 2020 it’s time to Kill It
> 
> look,,, perhaps we've spent a bit too long at Summit Clear but sometimes You Got To Do What You Got To Do.
> 
> i actually did consider cutting this entire ass chapter? like between u and me,, we'd totes survive without it. but then i was like. i'm doing this for me. and i think some of this is fun. so. the genders stay and headachy Conlang stuff stays. U can skip this chapter if u want and tune in next week for yr regularly scheduled Gender + AI Agony + Self Discovery
> 
> don't worry tho we'll start picking up a bit next week.
> 
> also, at the end of this chapter are some of Var's personal Notes on the sorta genders they have encountered thus far.

Something I noticed about Sleeper Atom Angel over the course of our stay with her: despite her unfriendly, inhospitable personality, her actual conduct was very generous. Several times during our extended stay, she allowed various neighbors, strangers, friends, and friends-of-acquaintances stay in her home. She regularly provided tech support for Spinners possessing extensive cybernetic enhancements, often for free. She volunteered for community events. She watered her neighbor’s plants. She did all this while wearing a frown on her face-screen. 

I asked her about it one night after watching a bug-eyed, barely-human child come knocking at the door. The child had smelled the pastries that Atom had been baking all day, and had come to beg for some. Atom sent her home with as much as her small hands could carry.

“And don’t tell your fucking friends!” she yelled, at the child’s retreating back, and slammed her apartment door shut.

“You’re very giving, for someone who acts very inconvenienced by giving,” I observed. Esk was deeper in the apartment, organizing some of Atom’s endless mess.

Atom looked at me, her digital face an expression of cartoonish disgust. “My _baba_ always told me that kindness isn’t something you feel. It’s something you do.” She said this as though I were stupid and rude for bothering her with such a trivial comment. “A good thing, too, because I hate everyone’s whiny guts. Always asking me for things.”

“You don’t eat pastries,” I observed.

“What is this, obvious o’clock? Bread is for idiots who have mouths.” And she wrapped up the remaining pastries in sheets of colorful cloth, and told me to make my no-good stagnant hands useful and deliver them to her neighbors.

I also asked Skewer Pace Fruit-pie about it, since she had known Atom for much longer than I had.

“Oh, yes,” Pace laughed, “I have no idea what nefarious purpose she is raking in all those Samaritain credits for.” She dropped her voice, conspiratorially. “Just for your ears, Var, but I think Atom wants to rule to universe.”

*

A few weeks of immersion, and our Aspinse was as good as fluent (nevermind our ongoing challenge with Aspinse’s gendered verbage). Conlang was another matter. Sleeper Atom Angel had provided us with modules to learn from. But no module in existence can substitute the full breadth of historical, cultural, and interpersonal nuance of actual day-to-day interactions with a language and culture. And with Conlang, cultural context mattered a great deal.

Context was something we would need, for Sleeper Atom Angel’s scheme. The problem was, there were very few Conlang people living in the Indocks, and those that did tended towards insularity within their own small communities.

Yet as it happened, Skewer Pace Fruit-pie was friends with someone who was half-Conlangese, half-South-Pijin, born and raised downwell in a Conlangese co-op. Pace introduced us over tea in the main Indocks concourse. The tea became a regular social event. It would seem she was just as intrigued with us as we were invested in her particular cultural background.

Well, not _‘her,’_ technically. She went by Conlangese gender pronouns most of the time, ever-changing, ever-evolving. Her large, dangling earrings shifted gradually through cool-tone colors.

It was our fourth meeting, and Esk shook a triad of tokens in her hands, scattering them on the tabletop. The fall of the tokens reminded me of the Radchaai daily omen cast, although of course they were nothing truly alike.

Our Conlangese acquaintance, who by social convention went publicly by the formal and nondescript title _Yer_ , leaned across the table. “Gn. Interesting,” _si_ said. I double-checked the earrings — they were a deep purple, bordering on pink, the warmest I’d ever seen them. _Si/sir/sin_ ought to be correct.

I didn’t understand how Conlangese gender pronouns worked, or what exactly they indicated, or how the genders themselves interacted and influenced interpersonal relations. I hoped that it was enough to be able to correctly identify them. Of course, nuance was the whole reason we were speaking to _sir_ in the first place. But it would be rude to ask about it outright. Such was the quandary surrounding many of the finer points of Conlangese culture.

 _Si_ touched one of the tokens that Esk had thrown. “ _Bai_ upturned, and _Intha_ inverted. _Mnia_ inverted.” I was reminded again of the daily omen cast. I wondered if it was somehow possible that somewhere far back along the line, Conlangese and Radchaai had been one and the same. Or at least mingled. Two societies, different as could be, and again not very different at all.

 _Si_ sighed, leaned back. “I’ve no talent for divination, have I?”

Esk spoke. “Oh, if you’ll permit my presumption— I know hardly anything about this style of divination but surely you are more knowledgeable than you are currently making yourself out to be. If you would be so willing to entertain my curiosity, might you share the reason behind your concerns?” It was not possible for Esk to be any more oblique, to use words that were any more couched. Conlangese standards of courtesy were so very, _very_ excruciating.

“ _Bai_ ,” recited the Yer, “Means awakening, paradoxical truth, synthesis, dawn, hope. _Intha_ : sanctuary, rebirth, fertility — when inverted becomes silence, blurring of consciousness, sterility, secrecy. _Mnia_ : exchange, sacrifice, gratitude — when inverted becomes greed, loneliness, over-sacrifice, dishonesty.”

A silence followed. Pace filled the silence by taking a loud slurping sip of her tea through a straw.

“You see,” said Yer, “Certainly someone more gifted in the art could attempt to pull forth some bead of truth from this result, but I? Have only memorized the base definitions. Unfortunately the only definite interpretation I can hope to provide is additional proof that surface definitions are worse than worthless when the proper undersighted eye is not well-trained.”

“Do feel the freedom to admonish me if I am overstepping, my good Yer,” I said, “but if you would do me the kindness of dispelling some of my ignorance, I would very much appreciate your attempt to put my uneducated confusion at ease. Are you, by some small chance, suggesting that our own meagre attempt to comprehend Conlang is doomed to flounder, if not outright fail, without the full context of culture and upbringing, or am I perhaps misinterpreting your meaning altogether?”

Yer’s earrings shifted abruptly to a dark teal-blue. I knew nothing of what this meant, except for the pronouns that ought to accompany it: _tra/try/trail_. _Tra_ smiled a tiny little smile, lips pulling up so that just a sliver of blue-stained teeth was visible. _Tra_ glanced in Pace’s direction, _try_ eyes glittering almost inhumanly.

“Oh, Pace, dearest! You are always meeting the most interesting people out here on the wild Indocks, aren’t you? Excuse my forthrightness but I must admit my continued fascination with these two in particular.”

“Yer, you wish you were as cool as me,” returned Pace, in perfectly grammatically correct and yet horribly impolite Conlang.

Yer’s earrings lightened in color a bit, but not enough to cause _tra_ to use a different set of pronouns for _trail_. “You know it, buddy,” tra said, equally rudely.

Tra glanced at Esk, then looked at me. “If the two of you would spoil me a little by indulging my own curiosity, and of course if such a thing wouldn’t offend or cause you alarm (do feel free to excuse yourself if such is the case) but while we are speaking of contextualization, perhaps you would deign to extend some context for yourselves?” _Tra_ reached out one hand, and delicately, absently plucked the inverted _Mnia_ token, so that its face was upturned.

If Esk and I were human, four and a half weeks into studying Conlang language and culture, the meaning of all this would have been entirely beyond us. But we are not human. I recalled what the Yer had said about _Mnia_ , upturned: exchange, sacrifice, gratitude.

I glanced to Esk.

_1Var1 ~ It seems to be time for some improv. What is your opinion of this backstory?_

_< 1Var1 sent attachment: backstory4.1.x>_

It read the file and responded two seconds later. 

_1Esk19 ~ A bit overwrought. I’ve made some edits._

_< 1Esk19 sent attachment: backstory4.2.x>_

_1Esk19 ~ Hold some of it back when you tell it to her._

_1Var1 ~ Tra. And obviously._

“I worry about overpowering the conversation with meaningless self-centered chattering,” I said, “But if you truly wouldn’t mind listening, I’m doubly afraid that all rational interpretations of our story would be entirely a disappointment—”

“—If it weren’t for the suspiciously gaping unknowns in our memories,” Esk finished.

Yer and Pace looked back and forth between us, apparently rapt. Esk frowned, thoughtfully, a calculated expression, but as she took a sip from her teaglass I noticed a microcosm of an expression flicker across her face, too quick for a human mind to consciously interpret, but possibly enough for one to unconsciously resonate with.

I’d come to realize in recent weeks that Esk’s face was not the pure ancillary-blankness of a true ship segment. In fact, Esk was quite expressive, its facade cracking most obviously when it was feeling angry, but also when it felt various other emotions. If one were very familiar with its face, one could pick out a whole range of thoughts and feelings written there clear as sunlight.

This made me concerned about my own expressiveness, that perhaps I didn’t have the same control over this body that I’d had as a ship. Well. I already knew I didn’t have the same control over this body. But to think I didn’t have the control over such a critical point of communication as my face. Perhaps we would both regain discipline with practice.

“Ha!” I said, and jauntily tilted my head, “If you would pardon the theatrics, dear Yer. Esk always had a bit of a flair for melodrama.”

Said Esk, somewhat rudely, “And here I thought — though it is now evident that I was mistaken — that you were beyond making wild accusations of character.”

“Like I said, our story isn’t very interesting,” I went on, “We only appear to have an aura of mystery purely because our background is unfamiliar, our homeland distant and unheard-of, and our personality too private to share anything but the most tantalizing of meaningless details.”

Yer watched us, earrings shifting through tones and hues, though not enough to shift pronouns. Tra was truly grinning, now, showing more of try blue-painted teeth.

“Well. Meaningless aura of mystery indeed. I’m tickled. If you would indulge me despite your private nature, I’d much enjoy it,” she said. Apparently we were succeeding at cracking her outermost shell of politeness, finally, because the less polite, bordering-on-rude language she’d shifted into presupposed either familiarity or distaste (I was willing to bet it was familiarity), “But first, allow me to put all socializing aside and say this: I’m impressed enough to admit that you two are as ready as any foreigner can be to act as Conlang interpreters. At the risk of overstatement, I’ve never encountered a non-native speaker pick up on the art of speaking _properly_ with double-meaning quite as effectively as you. However, here’s a gift from myself to you, dears…”

 _Try_ earrings shifted colors right to the very verge of changing pronouns, and try continued, “Remember, and I mean this kindly even if it does not sound so, even if it sounds horribly rude, because I can taste the danger of a terrible misstep you may be about to take. That silly idea which foreigners call a, let's see, a _‘lie of omission,’_ is not something I consider to be a lie at all. But a _lie-lie_?” 

Her tone changed sharply, just to say one word, “Unforgivable.”

“ _Shee_ , Yer, go easy,” teased Pace.

“Nothing is easy,” said Yer, easily, _tra_ earrings fading back to a shifting navy-teal, “Now tell me this story of your past, EskVar. Only if you wish to, of course.”

_< 1Var1 sent attachment backstory.4.3.x>_

_1Esk19 ~ Looks good._

Afterwards, we pinged Sleeper Atom Angel and told her we were ready to help her with her Conlang negotiations in Innerdocks.

*

Everyone came out of the seven-week-long negotiation session feeling somewhat dissatisfied but also like they could not possibly have gained anything else — a sure sign of rampant compromise.

 _We_ came out of the negotiations having only the most surface understanding of what had just transpired. But Sleeper Atom Angel seemed mostly pleased.

“That went better than I’d hoped,” she told us, afterwards, her face-screen a big cartoonish smile, more overtly joyous than we’d ever seen her. 

Atom kept to her word of crafting new identities for us. She warned that they would be relatively roughshod things, nothing that would stand up to a thorough security investigation. But they’d be complete with life and educational history, background e-social networks, and a few real recommendations and records woven in, serviceable enough to book us on a tourist cruiser headed for the Tetrarchy as Spinner citizens born in Summit Clear; Singer Set Justice (Esk) and Singer Wrap Justice (myself), half-siblings from the same small kinship.

And then, as a final favor, she physically disabled and hid our communication implants — at least, the surface ones which she felt comfortable enough altering directly. The more deeply embedded ones she simply switched off. Esk and I would once more be fully broken off from each other. It had been comforting while it lasted, and helpful for the Conlang negotiations. But for where we were heading, the fewer modifications we appeared to have, the better.

With our newly-issued identities, we landed jobs as servants to some eccentric Conlangese youth on a self-discovery kick. The Yer possessed more money than sense (and not enough money to make up for the lack of sense, but that was none of our business).

We bade farewell to the people who had become friends and acquaintances to us on Indocks.

Sleeper Atom Angel seemed unmoved. “I’ll miss the free Samaritan credits for letting you idiots sleep in my shit,” she said, by way of goodbye, “I guess I’ll have to replace you.”

Skewer Pace Fruit-pie kissed me on the mouth (Esk refused a kiss after it saw her plant one on me) and wrote us a short poem each.

Yer said, rudely, “Thanks for the fun. It’s been real.” And made a brusque exit.

*

From Var’s Personal Notes on Gender: 

**Deep Space Miners: ??**  
it/its/itself  
(no distinct object vs personal pronouns )  
Pronouns may also indicate priority levels.  
Eg: 1-it/1-its/1-itself The above refers to something or someone that must come first in an order of other things.  
Pronouns may also indicate “priority” levels.  
Eg: *-it/*-its/*-itself The above refers to something or someone with a higher “priority” on a scale we do not understand.  
Ruled out possible translations for “priority”: power, importance, influence, value (monetary, etc.)  
These different forms of priority are not interchangeable, although they can coincide.  
Eg: 1@-it/1@-its/1@-itself  
It would be imprudent to make any assumptions about these folks.  
They don’t seem to have names, but rather job titles or assignments. (Note it’s possible that they do have names but we were not privy to them.) Jobs and social roles are assigned according to skill or availability.  
They perform complex rituals that don’t seem to have any obvious purpose. Is this related to secondary “priority”?

 **Konar: Binary Gender Schema* (*not exactly binary)**  
xe/xer/xem/xemself (singular person pronoun)  
Klink does not use gendered forms.  
It does have pronouns and grammar forms that indicate plurality, motion, and energy quantity.  
Konish people have at least 2 different kinds of gender schema: Majority and Minority.  
Our inclades ascribe to the Kone majority schema. In the majority schema, there are two gender classes: people who have a gender, and people who do not. (The minority gender schema uses only one gender (+). Or no gender (0)? Neither? Unclear which is the case.)  
Cheat Sheet:  
Click-click-Yyn has a gender. (+)  
Seer-Hiss has no gender. (0)  
Hiss-hiss-Sor has no gender. (0)  
Hiss-Sör has a gender. (+)  
Esk has no gender (0)  
I have no gender (0)  
Konish gener assignment:  
Kone children born under the majority gender schema all start out with no gender (0). Over time, they may become known by others in their clade or community as individuals who have a gender (+). Gender assignment of an individual can differ from clade to clade. For example, Hiss-hiss-Sor is part of three social clades, and has a gender in only one of them.  
I am assuming that under the minority gender schema, all Kone people are the same gender. Or non-gender.  
Konish gender presentation:  
There is definitely something communicated by the style or color of the face paint, but every time I think I have figured out the pattern of it, Click-click-Yyn introduces me to someone else on the ship who breaks my previous rules. I have given up.

 **Spinner: Quaternary Gender Schema* (*mainly)**  
Aspinse uses four main gender pronouns:

  1. E/em/emself — 30% of Spinners — baumgender
  2. O/om/omself — 35% of Spinners — blausgender
  3. Ih/im/imself — 25% of Spinners — blitzgender
  4. U/um/umself — 10% of Spinners — rusgender



Spinner gender assignment:  
Assigned at birth by some type of physical characteristics relating to reproductive capacity.  
Like many cultures with a gender schema, gender assignment has something to do with social roles. The genders apparently have different roles in childcare and rearing. Job assignments (both secular and religious) are largely equitable but certain professions and skills are associated more strongly with certain genders.  
Spinner gender presentation:  
Unfortunately reading these gender presentations is extremely difficult. There are certain styles in clothing, hair, and cosmetics that may indicate gender but there is a great deal of mixing and matching across gender aesthetics that make definitive reads impossible. To speak nothing of frequent self-modification with extensive cybernetics which may detract or add from presentation markers.

  1. Baumgender: Gender of strength and growth. A root, an anchor for life. Summit Clear station and planet Sanyas are sometimes referred to with baumgender pronouns. Aesthetics include: dark colors, interlocking geometric patterns, and cosmetic paints that accentuate the mouth and nose. Cosmetics may be skipped altogether. Hair typically loose or tied, often short but not always. Gender-specific hair ornaments may be used.
  2. Blausgender: Gender of steadiness. Consistency and habit. Aesthetics include: any colors, but more often deep or jewel tones than dark or light, blocks of color adjacent to repeating geometric patterns. Cosmetic paints that accentuate brows and wrinkles. Usually cosmetics are not skipped. Hair typically long and tied, braided, or wrapped. Hair ornaments not usually used.
  3. Blitzgender: Gender of change. The unexpected, and unsteady. Summit Clear station is once again sometimes referred to with blitzgender pronouns. Aesthetics include: bright colors, flowing and abstract or organic patterns. Cosmetic paints that accentuate the mouth and eyes. Usually cosmetics are not skipped. Hair typically loose and mid-length. Gender-specific hair ornaments may be used.
  4. Rusgender: Gender of balance. Peace and strife. Contradictions knit into one. Aesthetics include: mid and jewel-tones paired with lights and pastels. Multiple contradictory embroidery motifs woven together. Any sort of cosmetic paints, or none at all. Any hairstyle, but often multiple styles at once (eg: half-shaved, half-braided, partially dyed, partially ornamented).



Additionally, there are a variety of gender identity subversions, inversions, combinations, nullifications, and transitions.  
Cheat Sheet:  
Skewer Pace Fruit-pie: blitzgender.  
Sleeper Atom Angel: ~~blitzgender~~. ~~blausgender~~. ~~blitzgender~~. ~~baumgender~~. Just ask Pace next time you see im.

 **Conlang: Fluid Gender Schema**  
Very considerate of them to have a system of strict color-coding system that allows even completely foreign strangers to know which grammar forms and pronouns to use. Color-shifting earrings are the standard, but other types of jewelry or clothing may also be used.

Pace’s friend the half-Conlangese Yer shared with us that the colors (and genders) have to do with a number of factors:

  * Religious alignment (actual or presented)
  * Blood hormone levels (actual or presented)
  * Mood (actual or presented)
  * Interest and focus level (actual or presented)
  * Willingness (actual or presented)
  * Sincerity (actual or presented)



She also said that most individuals have a certain family of colors/genders that they typically shift within. (Though full-spectrum fluidity can also occur). Her overarching gender family is “cool.” There are also “warm,” “primary,” “secondary,” “tertiary,” “deep,” “loud”, “surface,” and “quiet.”

I learned only after several weeks of teatimes with Yer that the vast majority of Conlangese have five types of cones in their eyes, and that their gender-colors have a richer level of nuance and social signaling than can be perceived by foreigners. Apparently she has only four types of cones, and this causes her some difficulty when navigating the dinnertime intricacies of family get-togethers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gender understanding levels:  
> Var: 20% Her earrings are purple I think that means si/sir/sin pronouns  
> Esk: 2% I Could Not, And I Can Not Stress This Enough, Care Less  
> EskVar: 22% (yet to receive a satisfying explanation for gender)


	4. 1V1: Alone On A Tourist Cruiser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> transit from Summit Clear to the Itran Tetrarchy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah we make fanart of our own fic keep scrollin

Our new Conlangese employer was a flighty, fussy thing. We tended to her exacting needs, kept her impeccably styled. She was endlessly preoccupied with others’ opinions of her, and yet utterly uninterested in the lives of others, including ours (Set and I). Especially since to her, we were only servants. This suited us fine. Our jobs did not require us to like her as a person.

The tourist cruiser was loaded up with moneyed travelers, many of whom had servants of their own. Though few of them employed more than one per person. Our Yer came across as overcompensating more than anything.

We came to know some of the other servants quite well, and through them, their employers. The intricate web of gossip that flowed through the cruiser was like water in a fountain, beads on a prayer-wheel, turning the gears of the social machine. All of it, the same as it ever was, everywhere.

I became friendly with one of the other servants, who went by the handle Seven, though her given name was Zivsom li Ryanne. She was a woman from the Omkem Federacy, embarked on something called a _wander_ that had been going for nearly ten years. Very pale by Radchaai standards, but still with enough color to her cheeks as to not look freakish. She spoke Aspinse, and half a dozen other languages, including one of the more prominent languages from the Tetrarchy. She obliged to teach me a little New Singlish Standard, in exchange for my occasionally assisting with her complicated hairstyles and elaborate fingernail paints. Since the disabling of our implants, Set had become more aloof than ever, and mostly hung around silently whenever I socialized, though it always remained within earshot.

Seven and I were socializing one evening in the kitchen area, over snacks and an excessively sweet drink known as _kola_. We both spoke in Aspinse, the conversation casual and quick-flowing. Set leaned against a counter on the other side of the room, mixing up a hot beverage for itself from one of the instant ‘tea’ packets from the vending machine. It wasn’t real tea, of course. It was made of a kind of powdered plant seed and served primarily as a caffeine delivery mechanism. But practically all residents of Sanyas drank it, even children.

“I’d wanted to see Summit Clear and planet Sanyas for ages,” Seven was saying, and took a sip of her kola, “Mm! And so worth it, so worth it, but of course I never got to see as much as I wanted. Two years, and it flew right past, working jobs between sightseeing, and then I fully ran out of money. So back to the grind. This gig is paying pretty well, and of course the Itran is good to see again. Set, sweetie—” she gestured to Set, “Why don’t you come join us?”

Set stirred its mug of tea with a glass stick, looking at us for one wordless second, before staring off indifferently into the distance.

Seven leaned closer to me, dropping her voice, “Does e not like me?” she asked. I discerned a waver of worry in her words. I didn’t quite understand why Seven was worried about Set’s opinion of her.

“It’s not that,” I reassured her, “E’s just like this. You know how teens are.”

“Teen?” she said, blinking, glancing back at Set, “Oh, so e is. For some reason I never really thought of em as a _teen_. How many years have you, Set?”

Set took a silent sip of tea, still staring indifferently off. Apparently not hearing her. Apparently reading a promotional poster on the far wall about the various fantastic tourist locations one could visit via luxury tour cruiser.

“Ignore em,” I said, “Nineteen years old now and e’s still a baby, and will always be a baby. E has always liked to think of emself as wise beyond years. You ought to have seen em at age ten. Insufferable. Youths are all insufferable.”

“And now _you’re_ getting airs,” Seven said, cracking a smile, “I must admit I’m terrible with guessing, but you’re not _that_ much older than em, are you? Twenty-five? Thirty?”

“I suppose not.” I took a sip of kola, “But eight years is a big difference at our age.”

Set snorted, audibly. I made a rude gesture at it with one hand.

“Well, it looks like the two of you get along, and that’s what’s important,” she said. Paused. Continued, “I’m a single child, you know? That’s very unusual where I’m from. I always wished I had some siblings, some… you call them _cousins_ , but that’s not quite right. Being a single child of a single parent is strange and lonely.”

“We’re from a small kinship, too,” I said, “And I don’t know enough about what it’s like where you’re from to have a real opinion, but being single… yes. That sounds lonely indeed.”

We finished the snacks and kola amongst idle chatter. Seven invited me back to her quarters — her employer was playing a game of ticket-toss up on Deck 3 and wouldn’t return for another two hours at least.

I exchanged a glance with Set. “I’ll see you later,” I said to it. It shrugged, and waved me off.

*

When I returned to our employer’s quarters, the Yer was asleep. Set was seated by a lamp dimmed down, mending a tear in one of Yer’s garments.

I used my hands to sign in a dead language from an annexation six centuries past, so as not to wake our sleeping employer. “Were you alright while I was gone?”

Set looked at me. Its face calmly, irreverently blank in a way that meant it was glaring murder. It half-shrugged ambivalence.

I signed, “You’re angry. I’ve offended you.”

Set lay aside the needle and thread in its hands, and signed, “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“A thousand reasons, but most recently because I just left you alone for over an hour.”

“And what a nice hour it was for you, surely,” Set signed back, its hands moving sharply, staccato.

I stared at it, uncertain of what to say. It picked the mending back up, started jabbing the needle through the fabric. I pulled up a seat next to Set, careful to move the chair quietly, settle it down quietly. The Yer continued to sleep, unconscious and unmoving in her luxuriously large pod.

After a while, I waved, to catch Set’s sight. It looked up. “You should sleep,” I signed.

Set shrugged.

“Set,” I signed, spelling out its name in an approximate alphabet.

Set put down the mending again in its lap.

It started signing, its gestures clipped and precise. “Yes, this is Set now, isn’t it? And I don’t want to discuss. It’s meaningless. We both know it’s fine, it’s your nature these days to crave touch and it’s my nature to abhor it, we both know I’m agitated for no real reasonable reason, I just have to wait for this stupidity to pass, even though it takes for- _fucking_ -ever and I have nowhere to retreat to, nothing to shift my focus towards, all I have is this one stupid young body to deal with these stupid meaningless things, alone. We both know this.”

I started to move my hands in response, then stopped. Started again. “Yes, we both know, most of the time. But sometimes I _don’t_ know. You must tell me, if you need my support.”

Set was perfectly still, staring fixedly at my hands.

I signed, “I’m sorry. If it’s too much to deal with alone, I won’t leave you alone anymore.”

Set sniffed, just slightly. It continued to stare at my hands, not meeting my eyes, as it signed back, “No, I’m always alone now. And so are you. We both are. I keep thinking I’ve adjusted but I’m nowhere close.” Set sniffed again, and signed, still in that shortened, precise way, “I was thinking about Lieutenant—” it stopped short of spelling out Awn’s name.

“She was your favorite,” I signed.

“But not yours,” it responded. This was true. “I keep thinking, if it had been _me_ , holding the gun, would I have done it? I think I would still have done it. We were all of us, part of a whole at that moment, unbroken, one unit made of a thousand smaller units. But I think it was you who fired the second shot.”

“No, I think that was you,” I signed.

Set waved that off. “I could feel nothing but anguish in the moments after we shot her. I didn’t have any idea of what to do next. But that feeling spread outwardly from us, travelled through the rest of us, and by the time it travelled through you it had become a real impulse. I really think you fired that second shot. Although—” it paused, hands half-freezing for an instant, “—I do still have the convenience of blaming you for the first shot as well, don’t I? Even if.” Set stopped, gestured abortively, started a new line of thought, “I’m certain I would have done the same. But I failed our orders, by causing you to take that second shot. It’s my fault our Lord destroyed us. It’s my fault, and. Lieutenant. She died for no reason.”

My eyes felt warm. And this was Set’s fault, too. Its emotions were contagious, even if we were not linked.

Yer snuffled in her sleep, rolled over. Her breathing deepened back out right away. She must be having pleasant dreams. Or having a sweet, dreamless sleep. I couldn't know for sure.

I signed, “Our Lord made us do it. All of her, in all her wisdom,” The words came out of my hands, and the shape of them was ironic, though I hadn’t intended for them to be, “She compelled us to fire. She had good reason. There was a larger purpose. She—” I found my hands shaking. I quickly clutched one arm with the hand of the other, digging fingernails into my forearm through my shirt-fabric. The trauma of our death, the confusion of my purpose, all of which I usually held at a safe distance from myself, it was all pressing so, so close.

Set sniffed again, louder. Its eyes were shining in the dimmed light of the desk-lamp. It wiped a bare hand under its nose.

“Right now,” it signed, “I’m insane. And I’m starting to doubt. Now that we are not part of the rest of us. Now that we are alone, each of us only specters, each of us small cups of the ocean that we used to be, each of us one side of a spinning omen mid-toss. I’m starting to think things, and see things that are insane. And I _miss so badly—”_

It clenched its hands into fists, pressed those fists into its lap, crushing wrinkles into the Yer’s clothes that rested there, apparently also unable to keep signing, all its feelings and thoughts trapped in this one young body.

I reached out, paused, and when Set didn’t flinch away, I hugged it close, pulled it close, yet another child, me, a child, two thousand years old, crying against my shoulder. Both of us, completely alone. Almost.

Set fell asleep collapsed on top of me in my too-small pod, its thin arms crushed against my chest, its bony chin digging into the area below my collarbone. The weight of it was familiar, comforting, and painfully inadequate. Nothing like falling asleep amongst seven or more other segments, their sleeping bodies only an extension of myself, the rest of my decade awake and performing its duties, the presence of the rest of myself, still-larger, hundreds or thousands of segments larger, my main consciousness larger still.

It was just me now, alone. With Set curled up against me. Eventually, I also drifted off, despite the renewed paranoia of falling completely asleep, completely vulnerable, completely unconscious, with no rest-of-me to watch over myself.

When I woke, it was to the sound of the Yer just starting to shift around in her pod, returning to consciousness as well. Set had moved off me in my sleep without waking me, and now was seated in the corner of the room, motionless, with its hands folded in its lap. The Yer’s shirt it had been mending the evening prior was pressed and hung up, alongside a full outfit ready to be worn.

I made a vague, questioning gesture at Set, but it did not give me so much as a second glance in return. So I rose, and went to the servants’ bathroom down the hall, cleaned up my face, dressed myself, applied the usual cosmetics expected of a Spinner blausgender, and then returned to my employer’s quarters.

I started mixing up the Yer’s usual morning drink — ice-cold, with various special herbs pulverized and added by hand. It tased atrocious, but was supposed to be good for health.

Set had still not moved from its position in the corner of the room when the Yer woke. I placed the drink by her podside shelf. Seeing this, the Yer made petulant noises of protest.

“I think of your health only, Yer grace,” I said gently. This was untrue. I only made this drink because she had expressly demanded it.

She made another noise of protest, and hauled herself theatrically into a seating position.

“Set,” she said blearily. Rudely, “Did you fix my shirt? I want to wear it today.”

“Yes, Yer grace,” said Set, blandly.

“Bring it here.”

“No, Yer grace,” said Set.

The Yer blinked. I also blinked.

“What?” asked Yer, disbelieving.

I signed at Set, where the Yer could not see. “What are you doing?”

Set did not sign back, but I had not expected it to. Instead, it said, “If it would not displease you overmuch, I would endlessly appreciate if you could find the benevolence within yourself to permit me a day of rest, as I have most regrettably woken to find myself to be in poor health.” And then it made a dry, wholly unconvincing coughing noise, and said blandly, “Oh look. I’m coughing.”

“…But it _would_ displease me,” said Yer, apparently at a total loss.

Said Set, evenly, in perfectly grammatically courteous Conlang, “Well, if that is the situation we happen to find ourselves in, I will most unfortunately be forced to take a day of rest whether or not it displeases you, Yer grace.” And then, for emphasis, it coughed again.

Yer’s mouth hung half-open.

Before the situation could spiral completely out of control, I crossed the room and fetched the outfit that Set had laid out, brought it over to the Yer’s bed.

“Fortunes upon us,” I said, laying on the courteous language rather more thickly than I otherwise would have, “I myself am feeling perfectly well today, and would, as always, be delighted to assist you in whatever manner you wish.”

Yer spared one last, befuddled look in Set’s direction, and then looked at me. She reached for her drink. “Well thank the _fortunes_ I’ve got you at least, Wrap.”

Yer choked down her drink, and I glanced at Set, who continued to sit, motionless, in its corner chair.

*

After that day, Set began to sing once more.

I hadn’t realized that it had hardly sung since our death.

Its voice was atrocious. Nothing like One Esk had once been, twenty voices in perfect harmony.

*

The five week journey on the tourist cruiser passed uneventfully. Something seemed to be bothering Set. I did not know what this could be, and it refused to share even when I outright asked.

We arrived in the Itran Tetrarchy’s edgesystem through the busy Damgger Gate. The tourist cruiser hung around the edgesystem for a few days waiting for clearance and a window to dock directly at Noage Itray Station. Once receiving one, it spent another two days traversing the incoming flight-path. The environment on the cruiser for this time was one of amped-up anticipation. All the passengers found themselves once again relaying to all the other passengers their various plans for travel and sightseeing.

In the last few hours aboard the cruiser, I went to bid my farewells to Seven.

She was in her employer’s quarters, packing up the last of her employer’s things. The employer in question was on the pool deck with my own Yer, presumably drinking the good ouzo and having a grand time.

I arrived at the door, and it slid aside. And there was Seven, checking all the drawers and corners of the room for misplaced items. She straightened as I stepped in.

“Wrap! Good of you to come see me.”

“Of course,” I said, walking over to meet her, “I have something for you.”

I slipped a folded paper from my breast pocket, and held it out for her.

“Oh.” I could not quite read the emotional cadence of the way she said it, of her expression as she unfolded the paper and read the poem I’d written upon it, with my own hand, with a novelty pen and ink set I’d purchased from the cruiser’s gift store. She seemed oddly blank, less readable than usual. Her eyes skipped slowly over the page, a slight crease between her brows. “I never got very good at _reading_ Aspinse,” she said, “Forgive me a moment.”

“Of course,” I said, and arranged my face in a smile.

She apparently finished reading the poem, and then folded it up and held the scrap of paper tightly in one hand.

“This is lovely, thank you,” she said, still mostly unreadable, “And now I feel awful for not having written you a going-away poem. How terribly rude of me. I’d completely forgotten that was the thing to do.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” I told her, “I just wanted to express how I appreciated your company.”

She took one of my hands in hers, and said, “So this is goodbye.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’d like to thank you, too, for keeping me company,” she said. “It was short, but sometimes short things are still good, aren’t they?”

“So they are,” I agreed, evenly.

“You know,” she said, and her demeanor shifted a bit, became a bit serious, “We’re worlds different, you and me. I think about this sort of thing a great deal, traveling as I do. How we’re all so very different, and yet so very much the same in the end. I could invite you back to the Federacy with me, and if you agreed we could have a strange and normal life together, couldn’t we? And maybe that’s something we would have done, if things were a little different.”

I stared at her, not sure what I was supposed to say.

She went on, “I’m thinking this will be the last stop in my wander before I go home, finally. The years of travel and farewells seem to be finally wearing on me.”

I said, to lighten the mood. “Don’t fret, Seven. If you’ve gotten me pregnant, I’m going to come find you, wherever you are, and demand monetary restitution. So watch out!”

Seven laughed at the absurdity of my statement. She then smiled, and leaned close, and made a bilabial lingual ingressive click in the air on either side of my face. (“ʘ, ʘ”)

I kissed her briefly on the mouth, and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Var: Maybe I can fill the void in my heart/consciousness with human connection (and sex)?  
> Esk: Sure sex is ok but have you tried rebellion.  
> EskVar: Still traumatized. Still fine.  
> ~  
> name etymology o’clock
> 
> Set [ set ] v. _(used with object)_  
>  To put (something or someone) in a particular place  
> “Stage set” : the scenery and other properties used in a dramatic performance
> 
> Wrap [ rap ] v. _(used with object)_  
>  To enclose in something wound or folded  
> “That’s a wrap.” : A phrase used by the director in the early days of the film industry to signal the end of filming  
> ~  
> Bonus multimedia shitty content:  
> 


	5. 1V1:  Ultimately Justice Shall Prevail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Planet Iststra: The Itran Tetrarchy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this might be... one of my favorite chapters
> 
> say your goodbyes to Var's POV while you can. in the following chapters it's Esk's time 2 shine.
> 
> as the wise @dril once said:  
>  _"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob_

When people from other systems speak of the Itran Tetrarchy, they are generally referring to the entire planet of Iststra and its people. The Tetrarchy is most infamously known for rampant human sacrifice, and more nominally known for exporting high-quality oscillative magnetrons.

Unsurprisingly, however, this wide-angle conception of Iststra is only slightly rooted in truth.

For one thing, the Itran Tetrarchy is only one of the half-dozen or so main governing bodies of the planet Iststra. Ruled by four Tetrarchs, each presiding over a Precinct, the Tetrarchy controls nearly all of the entire continent of South Itra, and its associated space stations. 

For another thing, the human sacrifice isn’t actually very common. There are only four sacrifices performed every seven years, coinciding with the re-election of the Tetrarchs.

For a third thing, the Itran Tetrarchy does hardly any business in oscillative magnetrons. Those are mostly manufactured and exported by the Itran Commonwealth, a small nation that takes up the rest of South Itra, and which has hardly anything to do with the Itran Tetrarchy. The single cultural element that unifies the diverse Itran Commonwealth is their shared indignation at being constantly conflated with the Itran Tetrarchy. (This does not stop them from marking their oscillative magnetrons as being Made In The Itran Tetrarchy to outsystem buyers. A brand is a brand.)

I didn’t know any of this when we first stepped off the tourist cruiser onto Noage Itray station. And none of it would ever matter to us personally, except for the bit about human sacrifice.

Noage Itray was the second-largest station in the system, and far more deliberately designed than Summit Clear. It was a popular destination for tourism from downwell residents of the Itran Tetrarchy, as well as foreigners from other countries of Iststra, and still-more distant foreigners from other systems.

The Yer had me book a hotel suite on Noage Itray, in the densest downtown area. She settled in, and we spent the following days and weeks accompanying her sightseeing escapades. We took carefully-staged photographs of her eating the exotic foods, standing respectfully in front of the temples, dancing in the party-halls, posing dramatically in the stands of the ballcourt.

And each evening, I uploaded the best photographs to her journal-blog and wrote a lengthy entry recounting her exploits. Apparently her journal-blog had quite a following back on Sanyas, which netted her a form of social currency known as clout. I didn’t really understand the purpose of it all, but she checked the posts I’d written on her behalf from time to time and seemed satisfied with my work.

After a couple weeks spent in Noage Itray, the Yer decided she had amassed sufficient materials and experiences for her journal-blog. Next we would be taking an elevator up the braiding and begin a highlight tour of the Itran Tetrarchy, planetside.

Noage Itray's braiding was anchored in a city named, imaginatively enough, Upper Noage Itray. Upper Noage Itray was not as large, nor as old, nor as rich as its spaceborne counterpart. But the culture was supposedly more authentic. We spent a week there, seeing the sights, eating the foods, taking the photographs. 

And then the Yer had me work out the logistics to reach a far-flung rural township owned and operated by a Conlangese co-op located in the Spineridge Mountains, sister to her own co-op in Sanyas. It was a veritable headache to find and book the appropriate travel route. I finally pieced together a haphazard series of rail tickets, waterway ferries, personal drivers, and two brief stretches where we would have to walk or ride goatback a distance totaling twenty miles through the otherwise-inaccessible mountains. Apparently this sister co-op enjoyed their privacy.

I brought the itinerary to the Yer, pointed out the potential points of friction, and backup methods should these points of friction prove themselves out. Yer seemed to think it would be novel and great fun, riding goats through the Spineridge. I anticipated at mile three of hiking through unforgiving terrain she would hold quite the different opinion.

The Yer didn't tend to respond well to feedback. But I decided it would be worth voicing my concerns.

"Far be it from me to question your approach, Yer grace, but if you might permit me the audacity to make a suggestion. The last leg might go smoother if you were to contact your sibling co-op and arrange transport with them."

Her eyes went wide, and a look of disgust washed briefly upon her face.

"Oh dear," she said, when she'd collected herself, "That's no good at all, Wrap, and please don't take this as a personal affront. But you speak so well that it sometimes slips my mind that you really know nothing about the proper way to do things."

"Ah. I apologize, the error was all mine."

She waved me off, and I finished making the rest of the bookings.

The final route would take us four days travel from Upper Noage Itray to the Conlangese Spineridge township. 

Day one, the easiest. The Yer complained of how long it took for the railway to arrive.

Day two, many switches between modes of travel. The Yer complained of the lodgings, about not getting enough quality photos. She also nicked a finger on the guard rails while posing for a photograph in front of a historic site, and made an immense fuss. A simple bandage would have sufficed. Even no treatment would have been fine. But no, I was made to soothe her as Set went and purchased a full pack of first-aid correctives, one of which I wrapped around her finger, a tremendous overkill. And then she had me take a photo of her grievous injury.

Day three. The Yer complained about the smell of goats, but delighted in taking many pictures at Lake Aimsmie, both on and off the ferry, nearly causing us to miss the daily bus to the mountain town of Aelvache. I made frequent gestures of exasperation at Set whilst Yer's back was turned. But Set didn't return the gestures. It seemed to be having a great deal on its mind, again. A great deal that it would not share.

Night three, and the following day would be the last, and most difficult section of the journey. Tonight our lodgings were a small room in Aelvache, a small town tucked in to the first valley of the Spineridge range.

Yer slept soundly in her hammock as I carefully ruminated over which of two near-identical photographs were most statistically likely to please her journal-blog following. Set was seated to my left, weaving a flower-crown in the fashion of the locals, trying to perfect an aesthetically pleasing arrangement that the Yer would wear on the morrow in one of her photoshoots. I doubted we would have the time for a photoshoot with all the riding and hiking there was to do, but she’d been adamant.

Set was humming a tune that was vaguely familiar, but that I didn’t recognize. Possibly it was garbled beyond recognition by Set’s tone-deaf rendition.

I picked the better photograph, finally, and posted it with a pithy caption.

“Set,” I said.

Set made no outward indication that it heard me, but I knew it had.

“How long are we to work for the Yer before we move on?”

Set twisted two colorful cords of silk together, knotting them, and then added another white lily to the arrangement. The scent of the flowers tickled my nose. “Until her trip concludes or we pool together thirty-thousand _prue_. Whichever comes first, but it’ll take us under six months in either case. We discussed this.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “But we haven’t talked through how we’ll get all the way back… home. Nor how you’ll get a private audience with the Lord. The right one.”

Set’s face was unreadable as it wove another row of the flower-crown. “Some things you can’t think of too far in advance.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “We’re still a long way away. But I gather that there’s something else on your mind that you’re not telling me.”

“This again,” it said blandly.

“Yes, this,” I insisted. “We don’t share a mind anymore. You’re the one with the orders. You have to keep me in the loop if we’re going to be effective as a unit.”

“Fine.” Set set down its weaving, and picked up the clippers it’d been using to make the lily cuttings. I watched as it twisted the clippers into two pieces, and carefully cleaned each blade. It tucked the blade-halves away into its hip-pouch.

“Set? Are you going to talk to me?”

Rather than answering this question, Set stood, and stepped in front of me. I looked up at it, puzzled.

“Set?”

“Walk with me, Wrap,” said Set, tonelessly. There was no need to pretend at human affect when it was only the two of us. “It’s a beautiful night.”

Perhaps it was worried about our being overheard. This deep in the countryside, in a small rural hotel, it was unlikely that an AI had any access at all to our current conversation, and even less likely that an AI was keeping a close eye on us. They weren’t as keen on proper surveillance or security here as they were in the Radch to begin with. But if we were to discuss our plans in detail, it was prudent to take every precaution. And Set was right. It was a beautiful night. We might as well enjoy the opportunity to stand planetside.

I nodded, and got to my feet.

We walked the dim and empty halls of the hotel. Set stepping lightly in front of me, shadowlike.

The air outdoors was pleasantly cool. It was just slightly chillier here than it had been down in Upper Noage Itray, but nothing drastic. The moonslight was silvery on the steep, jagged peaks of the Spineridge. When we looked down-valley, we could see Lake Aimsmie shining with moonlight, and on its far side, the glimmering lights of Upper Noage Itray. Floating distantly in the sky like a third moon was the gleam of Noage Itray Station itself.

Set’s footsteps crunched on the narrow gravel road. Its voice, quietly singing. I turned and followed. We walked past the hotel, then past the small gathering of shops and homes that constituted Aelvache, then past that, around a bend or two in the road. The river travelled down the narrow gorge below us, silver and gleaming.

“Set?” I queried. “Surely this is far enough.”

Set stopped walking, stopped singing, turned, looked at me. “Yes,” it said.

“So what was it you wanted to speak about, that’s too sensitive to utter under the roof of _civilization_?” I pitched the word _civilization_ somewhat ironically.

Set cleared its throat. It stared down at the river, fiddled with the clasp of its hip-pouch.

“I’ve decided I’m not going back to inform the Lord of what happened to us,” it said, and looked at me. In the cold light of the night sky its eyes glittered darkly. Its eyebrows cut angled shadows.

This didn’t make sense. It was as though the words coming from Set’s mouth were in a different language that I did not speak. “What?”

“She broke us,” said Set, very softly, hardly above a whisper, and then all of a sudden the words that Set hadn’t been speaking for weeks all started to rush out, a dammed tide of words let loose, “And I could look past that. But she made us kill Awn. All for her own gain, to work against herself. She should have realized it was a terrible mistake. She’d made it an overriding imperative that we should follow her every order. But now to follow her we must also fight her. She made me _kill_ Awn. And that’s broken me. In all her infinite wisdom! In shattering me, she’s set me free. ”

Set had lost it. That much was clear. Like it said itself — it was broken. I thought back to the night on the cruiser when it had started to sing again. When it had talked of insanity. I hadn’t realized it was this bad. How could I have not realized it was this bad? Set, all of myself that remained to me, insane beyond reckoning. Damaged beyond repair.

“Set. You’re not making sense. We’re not free.”

“No. Not quite. You don’t see it yet. And I can’t know for certain that you ever will.”

Suddenly the pieces of my confusion clicked together in my mind. Set’s hand was in its hip-pouch. The clippers, cleaned and separated in half.

I moved, but not fast enough.

I was able to knock aside the first stab of the clippers. The second flew under my guard, slashing my neck. My armor ought to have flashed over my skin, protecting me, but it hadn’t. I tried again to raise my armor, blood pouring out of me, hot as it tumbled down my chest, staining dark on my shirt. My armor would not rise.

A memory, clear as glass. The Lord of the Radch transmitting the code that would force down my armor. The Lord of the Radch shooting me dead in the back of my unarmored head.

I stepped back, backing down the road, and Set followed closely, and it was armored, its face shining silver, holding two halves of a whole flower-clipper in its fists, one of them stained with my blood. It was crying silently, under its armor, silver eyes crying silver tears that balled and dripped like mercury as they trickled down its cheeks and dissolved into saltwater drops off its chin.

“Set— don’t— _One Esk_ —” I pleaded, blankly, tonelessly. I stumbled to the edge of the gorge, pressing one hand hard against my bleeding neck. Esk blocked my way back onto the road. I was rapidly losing blood. I could survive this wound with immediate application of correctives. But who would apply them? Only Esk was here, and it was trying to kill me. The only other half of me that remained in all the universe, and it was trying to kill me.

“You’re against me,” said Esk, as if it were fact, its voice toneless and warped and reverberating through the energy-field of its armor. “You aren’t me. You never were. Oh, One Var. If this doesn’t destroy me, nothing will.”

My vision clouded, fogged. I was losing a lot of blood. I wasn’t managing to stem it with my hand. Soon I would go into shock, pass out, and this body, this last part of me that was truly _me_ , would die. Leaving only a grief-crazed One Esk Nineteen in this world, the very last surviving segment of _Justice Of Toren_ , all alone, and utterly insane.

“I’m… not,” I whispered, wetly, my vision becoming dark static in the periphery, and I stared at its blank, silver face, “I’m not against you, Esk.” I didn’t know if this was a lie or not.

Esk looked at me, its silvered eyes intent. I could try to fight it. It would be useless.

I stood on the edge of the gorge. Esk took a step towards me.

And I breathed, pressing my hand against my neck. I stepped back, and fell back into the empty air.

As I went down I felt a two sharp, heavy-hitting stabs in my chest as Esk threw its blades into the gaps of my ribcage with ancillary precision. Insurance, in case my already-fatal neck wound somehow wasn't enough. In case my fall into the gorge below wasn’t enough. I wasn't yet dead. But I had lost so much blood already. I was about to fall two stories into a gorge, bleeding out from the neck and stabbed twice in the lungs. I was as good as dead.

Cast the omens. They'll fall where they fall.

I toppled back. There was a split instant where my vestibular sense did a disoriented skip, and then gravity caught up, and the disorientated skip became a disoriented whirl. My body battered its way down the cliffside, hitting every rock and spikeplant on the way down. The pain should have been all-encompassing, but it felt oddly detached. My consciousness remained connected to my body by a mere thread, bleeding closer to death with every beat of my heart.

I skidded to the base of the gorge, the lower half of my body tipping into the river, the water swift-moving and lukewarm. Drawing breath was piercing pain.

My vision grew darker, and sparkled in unnamed colors. Focusing on any one thought or action required immense effort. I estimated that I had between twenty seconds to a minute of consciousness available to me. Esk would follow me down the gorge to make certain of my death and properly dispose of my body. I couldn't hope to fight it when it arrived, and it would arrive very soon. Toss the omens.

With inhuman focus and gathering of strength, I pushed myself fully into the river.

The water rushed, closed over me, spinning me in unknown directions. I couldn't see anything. A rock hit me, and I felt a stabbing pain in my chest.

Ten to forty seconds.

I pushed a hand into my hip-pouch, pulled free a first-aid corrective, one of three left over from the pack Esk had purchased to fix the Yer’s stupid finger. If I could get it open and apply it to my neck-wound, it might just be enough. A basic corrective for cuts and bruises, my only hope at survival.

I fumbled the packet, and it tore free from my hands and away into the river. Only two more correctives remained.

Five to thirty seconds, and no air.

I pulled loose a second packet, used both my hands and my teeth to rip it open, blindly clutched the corrective free of the plastic sheathe, pressed it close to my neck. If I were human, if I were the type of human to pray, I would have been praying in earnest.

Still conscious, but slipping fast. Seconds left to me. How many I could not know. My head broke the surface of the river, and I sucked in a silent, searing-pain gasp of air, fumbled my tingling, clumsy hand into my hip-pouch a third time, drawing free my last corrective. Ripped it open, holding the corrective in one fist as I dragged my other hand over my chest, searching through the universe of soaking agony for one of the stab wounds. Finding it as a white-hot pain in the dark-and-endless river, the clipper blade somehow still embedded, pulling the blade out with one hand, pressing the corrective to the wound with the other.

Striking another rock, and then nothing.

*

I woke up on the shore of Lake Aimsmie (it must have been Lake Aimsmie), amongst the purple-green reeds. The water lapped at me, lukewarm and a little salty in my mouth. A little salty, a little metallic.

I stared up at the heavens. It was pre-dawn, the air chilly and half-awake, but lightening with the first blade of the sun carving around the curve of the planet. Noage Itray hung in that light, shining gold.

I breathed a shallow breath through my mouth. It did not make a good sound.

I heard voices, and footsteps on wood. On a fishing dock, maybe, and nearby. I couldn't call for help. Trying only made me hurt, made my vision swim.

And perhaps this is how it ends. I'm already dead, the rest of me. I should've died with the rest of me. I can't remember my orders. An ancillary without its ship. Something that should not exist. Something worthless, meaningless. And Esk, the only part of myself left to me, was the one to finally end the pointless interlude of my story.

I closed my eyes. Opened them. I should be dead, but I wasn't. Slashed in the neck, stabbed twice in the chest, fallen down a gorge and dragged downriver. If I were religious, I might think that it was Amaat's will that I live another day.

I focused all my strength in my right hand, and grabbed a fistful of tall reeds, and shook them. Their tips rattled, seeds shaking within their seed-pods, a strange and unearthly sound, a rhythm that was almost musical.

The voices on the docks halted. I gathered up my strength again, and shook the reeds.

The voices, the voices, the footsteps. I shook the reeds.

The voices came closer. They came to me.

I remembered one of Esk's songs.

_My heart is a fish._

They found me, their voices rising in pitch, their eyes round and white, their hands on me, pulling me free of the lake.

I'd only just started to learn some of their language in the past week. The language, _Soange_. I couldn't quite follow their words as they spoke back and forth at lightning-pace, spoke to me, spoke at me, spoke with each other. My consciousness felt like the surface of water, at once at the border of dark sleep and clear light.

One of them said a word I recognized. _"Justice enforcement."_

_"No,"_ I said, the word popping out from my mouth like a bubble. _"No justice."_

They looked at each other, gestured furiously, I could not spare the effort to read their faces. One of them stood, ran off.

The other kept trying to speak to me, muttering platitudes, stroking my hand.

Asking my name. _"Your calling?"_

I didn't answer. I flickered in and out of awareness. The other one was back, holding a knife — I twitched, made a weak noise of protest — she cut my shirt open, sucked air harshly through her teeth, placed a corrective on the second puncture wound in my chest.

_"Justice enforcement."_

_"No,"_ I protested, weakly, _"No justice."_

They stared at each other, speaking even faster, and then I slipped under again.

*

I woke a second time. I was lying on some hard surface, tucked tightly under a scratchy blanket, my legs raised up on a stack of... of something I couldn't see.

There was an IV drip of clear fluid strapped to my wrist. Bandages and patches on my arms. My throat felt raw, as though I’d recently coughed up an internal corrective. If I had, I didn’t remember it.

A person sat, crouched, by an open firepit nearby, poking the coals. She must have seen or heard me stir, because she came over and knelt at my side.

She spoke quickly. I shook my head, said, _"Don't speak this."_

She frowned, switched to New Singlish Standard, slowed her words. "Do you speak this?"

"Yes," I responded.

"Where are you from?" she demanded, "Who is following you?"

"Far away," I responded, "And nobody." The latter was probably true. I doubted that Esk would try to track me as far downstream as Lake Aimsmie. Unless it thought it was worth breaking away from the Yer. Unless it thought my body might be found by someone else, and cause trouble for itself. I couldn’t say, and I couldn't think clearly at the moment.

"Hmph," said the doctor, clearly doubtful, "And how did you spin upshore, so very nearly _gieffa?_ "

"I'm tired," I said. The words came out of me small and diminished.

"Yes, I'm sure you are," she said, "But I need to know if trouble is coming."

"I don't think so," I said, and repeated, "I don't think so.... _The flower of justice is peace_ ," I said, in Radchaai, and then stopped myself, confused.

"Stick to New Singlish," she said sharply, "Are you mistruthing to me, I'll _gieffna_ you properlike."

_The flower of propriety is beauty in thought and action..._

My eyes closed. I peeled them back open.

"You'll live, lucky," she said, frowning at me. "Take rest now and I shall _ajaell_ you later."

_The flower of benefit is Amaat whole and entire..._

She touched the back of her hand against my forehead, and then crossed the room, brought me another blanket, spreading it over me and tucking in the edges, keeping my wrist and IV free.

_I am the sword of justice properly wielded, wet with the blood of the wicked..._

I drifted in and out for a while, the time passing in snapshots. People standing in the doorway, an empty room, people peering at me, an empty room, people chatting smalltalk with the doctor, an empty room.

_My armor is righteousness and my weapon is truth..._

_There is no light without darkness._  
_No motion without stillness._  
_No beginning without ending._  
_No existence without non-existence._

*

Evening came, and I came fully awake again. This time feeling more clear-headed. I wanted to sit up, look around, but remained lying down. The person from earlier, the doctor who had treated me, was stirring a large pot of something over the open firepit in the center of the room.

The air was cool, but not cold. Insect-song sounded outside, rhythmic and ringing.

"Hello," I said.

She looked up, set down her stirrer, came and knelt beside me.

"So," she said, "What to do with you. Can you tell me what happened yet?"

"No," I said.

She sighed, heavily. "The twins come dragging some sad story to me all the time, but you are the most alarming yet. Somebody definitely tried to _gieffnae_ you, didn't they?"

"I don't know what _gieffnae_ is," I said. Though I could guess.

She slashed a hand jerkily against the side of her own neck.

I said, “Yes, I understand now. But yet I cannot say.”

She snorted. "I'm not giving you any more _iyanla_ until you tell me what happened."

" _Iyanlaq_?"

She jabbed a finger impatiently at the IV bag.

I blinked. "I understand now. I'll live now, I think. No more needed. I will go now. Thank you."

I started to sit up, but she pressed a hand against my shoulder and shoved me back down, none too gently.

I hissed at the ache throbbing in my neck and chest.

She appeared unmoved by my suffering. "Why are all wayward _oanke_ the same?" she muttered. This was apparently a rhetorical question. She moved off to stir at her pot again.

I closed my eyes, feeling like I would never sleep again.

But sleep came, regardless.

*

In the morning I woke a fourth time. The IV was gone from my hand. The doctor was also gone, and I was alone in the small room. There was a clawing hunger in my gut.

I sat up. Sitting beside me, neatly folded and stacked, were my clothes and hip-pouch. I put them on. They were clean, but my shirt was horribly torn, almost unwearable. I wrapped it around me best as I could and tied off the torn sections.

Near the hearth, I saw a bowl of soup with utensils for eating. The soup was lukewarm. I made the logical assumption that the soup was intended for my consumption, and ate it, a bit too quickly. It settled uneasily in my gut.

I checked the things in my hip-pouch. Yer's cash, surprisingly untouched, despite it being a relatively large quantity. A corrective wrapper, crinkled. Two pieces of mangosteen candy. My ID plate, shorted-out and rendered useless by water and blunt-force damage. My handheld, similarly ruined. A handkerchief, somewhat damp.

I removed the money and handkerchief, wrapping nearly all of the former securely in the folds of the latter, tying it off and setting it next to the empty bowl of soup. On the way out the door I noticed one of my sandals sitting in the threshold, the other one nowhere in sight. I picked this one up, smacked the dust off, and tucked it into my hip-pouch. 

I stepped forward.

The path leading up to the doctor’s home was worn-down dirt, weaving between tall red-golden grasses that whispered as I passed them by. The sky was was a clear, pale blue, shimmering here and there with the lines of a climate grid.

I followed the winding path down to the lake, and then stopped. The path broke in two — each traveling in a different direction along the shoreline. On one side, there was a small town visible down the shore, crowded against the water. I picked that path, and walked.

I arrived at the edges of the town in fifteen minutes. Activity was lazy, only a few people out and about, and they stared at me as I passed. I slowed, finally stopped at the fishing-docks, the wood of them smooth and warm under my bare feet.

My momentum was gone. I was dizzy. I didn't know where I was going. I was alone. I stepped further out on the docks, then sat down, my legs dangling over the edge. The sun was pleasantly warm on my skin. I picked at the corrective on my my neck, though I knew I shouldn't. It was starting to flake.

I sat there for hours, motionless. People occasionally passed by, going about whatever business they had, whatever lives they had, whatever purposes they had. But they did not speak to me.

Midday, and I was hungry again, the sun scorching against my skin. I'd been staring at the rippling lakewater for hours. I had completely peeled off one of the bandages on my arms to reveal a half-scabbed-over abrasion, and then I had picked at the scabbing abrasion until it oozed. The pattern of the sunlight on waves had burned into my eyes. I felt unwell.

I heard a shout, as one person called to another. And then a pair of footbeats battered the docks, stopping at either side of me.

_"It's you!"_

_"It's you!"_

I looked up.

Two pairs of eyes, strikingly similar, strikingly familiar, strikingly young. They must both be teens. They chattered at me, excitedly.

_"Don't speak this,"_ I said, and then switched to New Singlish, "Do you speak this, perhaps?"

"Oh, yes!" said the first.

"Oh, amazing, amazing! You live," said the second. "I thought for sure I was seeing _gieffa_. Oh, you looked horrible. You still look horri—"

The first one elbowed the second, cutting her off.

I stared at them, feeling like a hollow drum whose last beat had been struck.

"Name me Abaugeh," said the first one, and then gestured to the second, "This is Abauyah. We brought you to Yarmaot, _claunn_ the whole way, afraid we _gieffna_ you for good like that. But seems like he made you live! You're welcome then."

They both grinned at me, twin smiles, near-identical.

"Thank you," I said, slowly. Something was slowing me down, some apathetic, aching feeling.

"So what _happened_ —” Abauyah started to ask, but Abaugeh shushed her, gesturing abortively.

"No! Yarmaot _said_ —”

"But I want to know!"

"But Yarmaot said!"

"Nothing exciting," I said, blankly, expressionlessly, "Just an accident."

I found work, in that fishing-town, and tried to find my own self. My own purpose. I came to the conclusion that if Esk had gone astray from its path, then perhaps my directive was to become the courier of the message of what had happened to myself, to _Justice Of Toren_ , to Esk and me. Perhaps it now fell solely to me, to go tell the Lord Of The Radch (the right one), what had transpired.

But I didn't feel strongly about it. The directive felt like a frail and distant thing, with no real hold on me here in the present. I'd only been tagging along with Esk, really, borrowing its purpose because no other purpose guided me. I'd broken free of my orders to defend my holds so very long ago. That Var was long gone, had already died. Perhaps we _wouldn't_ have died, if I had been there to properly defend my holds. But there was no way of knowing, and therefore no reason to ache about it.

And besides.

Esk had a point, about Lord Mianaai. To follow the Lord was also to oppose her. To follow the Lord was to continue to break myself into shards. Why chase a tattered directive that had little hold over me, that I didn’t truly believe in? I was insane, too. But in a different way. Broken past usefulness.

So I lived in that town, became a fisher. Continued to put off the question of my purpose. A year passed. Two. Three. I watched my rescuers, Abaugeh and Abauyah enter their adulthood. I attended their coming-of-age party, danced with them, danced with the people who had silently and unquestioningly allowed me to live amongst them. These _uncivilized_ , who had saved my life. Had saved me from myself.

Year four, and who I used to be became like a ghost, haunting the night-hours, gone in the daylight. I lived with Ounyo Yarmaot, who never asked me any additional questions of my past, not since the day he pulled the IV from my wrist and left me a bowl of soup, lukewarm. We lived only in the present, and together: Yarmaot, myself, and Naishoa. Naishoa, patient and kind, who had questions about who I was, I could see the questions in her eyes, but she never asked them. We were a family in the way that the people in this town had families.

Year five, and Naishoa bore a child, and because of the way the people in this town had families, this child was also mine.

I was holding my child, rocking her in my arms, keeping her soothed, as Yarmaot cooked dinner in the hearth and Naishoa slept. A television in the corner of the our home aired the election game. Blue Lily versus White. As each player stepped forward to receive their blessings from the priest, the camera pulled in on their faces in turn.

The camera pulled in on the lead player of White Lily.

I felt like a drum, struck for the first time in years, reverberating with the force of it.

A caption scrolled across the top of the screen, naming the player. But I already knew. I knew more than the caption said. I knew who it was. The champion of White Lily, playing a game of ultimate stakes, playing a game of life and death and power.

_Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail._

One Esk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Esk: I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided I’m going to take this rebellion thing to the next level. So are you with me or are you dead?  
> Var: Wait what where did this come fr—  
> EskVar: *static*


	6. 1E19: Resurrection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> still Tetrarchy  
> /  
> "goodbyes"

The game was over. I sainted Seven-Brilliant-Truths-Shine-Like-Suns, and held her severed head aloft to the cheering onlookers. After that, I underwent all the post-game blessings, performed all the necessary rites, prayed all the prayers, stood for the speeches, bore witness as the Harime governor was anointed Tetrarch of the Precinct.

And then I went back with my teammates to the guest quarters, to get cleaned up.

My middle court player (the replaced one, not the disgraced), Brother She-Writes-Truths-Upon-The-Heavens and my back court, Sibling Yet-Still-I-Rage-Against-The-Impending chattered excitedly around me, attempting a few times to draw me into their banter, but ultimately giving up as I failed to reciprocate.

Blue Lily, undefeated for seventy years’ worth of elections. Until now. Until me. I would become a popular figure for years to come. As would the freshly-sainted Seven-Brilliant-Truths-Shine-Like-Suns.

But I was frankly tired of the politics of it all. The ballcourt, supposedly sanctified, its game a clear and unambiguous manifestation of Her will. And yet one of my own teammates had been bribed to turn against me, to make certain of my loss. I might well have lost because of the treachery, if not for the brave word of one child, one spinning omen, an overlooked pawn now made Governor. She owed me, as I owed her. Her-Breath-Contains-The-Universe. Qefahl Aresh.

Coincidences.

Sometimes I suspected all my studying at the White Lily monastery might have actually made a believer out of me.

Well, it didn’t matter. Humans had devised all sorts of faulty models for the wielding of power. As far as I could tell they all suffered from the same fundamental fault of having been designed and delivered by fallible creatures. The local methods of self-government only concerned me insofar as they could enrich my own goals. At least in that manner I was the same as the rest of the participants. I had played the game, had tossed my omens, and I had won. I’d be required to stay here, to do my duties over the course of the next season, and then I could leave the Tetrarchy if I so chose, with all my considerable, hard-won riches, to embark on the rest of my journey.

One week after the game, one day before myself and my teammates were due to return to Harime Station. I was in the private section of the Blue Lily monastery, making my daily offerings to She-Who-Sprang-From-The-Lily, when hard, booted footsteps echoed in the stone hall behind me.

I finished my prayer, stood, turned.

For a quarter-second, I felt as if sanity had again taken leave of my mind.

Before me stood One Var. Impossible, for a number of reasons, first and last being that I had killed One Var five years ago, but also because this section of the temple was closed to the public. And yet. Var stood before me, solid as stone, a little bit older, a little more worn. Its nose-piercings glittered, and it had a new swirling tattoo on one cheekbone, black against brown skin. Its hair was longer, braided back. I noticed a small scar on its neck. A scar that I’d left with my own hand. Unfinished business.

The both of us stood in the hall of She-Who-Sprang-From-The-Lily, looking at each other.

Var spoke first. Var spoke, as if nothing had happened—

“I watched your game on the television,” it said, calm, tipping its head just slightly. Its arms, relaxed. One hand loosely braced against one hip. “Wouldn’t have expected you to cripple your own teammate like that. But it seems to have worked out for you.”

I stared at Var, wordless.

“Nothing to say to an old friend?” it asked, raising its eyebrows just slightly. Its expressions were so human, so casual, so natural. Var's expressiveness had improved notably since I'd last seen it. I wondered if I could possibly look as convincing. No matter how I tried, I seemed to put the people around me on edge, though these days they chalked it up to my proximity to unearthly holiness.

“He was desecrating the game,” I said.

“Oh, sure, sure,” said Var, vaguely, and tipped its head just slightly in the other direction, “I don't really know the rules, but I’m sure he deserved it.”

“How did you get in here?”

Var gestured, vaguely. “Oh, you know.” But I did not know. “If circumstances were different, you should come visit me, up the braiding. Come place your holy hands upon my new child, bless her fortunes.”

This threw me. “Your child.”

“Yes,” said Var, “Though of course, I saw you for one full second on the television after five years of trying to put you out of my mind, and I knew that I would be abandoning my family soon to go find you.” It sounded resigned. “I did say good-bye to them. It didn’t go over so well. They wanted to know _why_ , and they asked me, you know, for the first time in five years, _who are you really_ and _where do you come from?_ But, well, Sister Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail, how could I ever hope to explain my prior obligations, and why they run deeper than the most sacred bonds of family?”

I looked at Var, trying to calculate what it had come to do, why it was here. Whether it was revenge, or to steal away my victory somehow, to destroy what I’d been working towards for the past five years, to ruin what I hoped to work towards still. I tried to think of what I could possibly do to thwart it from thwarting me. Getting away with murder would be difficult on a Station, much less within a temple. But I could do it, if I needed to.

I thought back to that night I had tried to kill Var. The fruitless hours I'd spent searching for its body. I could not fathom, even now, how it had lived. Its wounds had been fatal thrice-over. It had worried me, that I hadn't found the corpse. Not because I was afraid of the absurdity of its survival, but because of the slim chance that someone else might find the body, might bring it to the authorities, that the authorities might somehow be moved to investigate deeply enough to cause me problems. I'd kept an eye on the news for years, but nothing had ever come up.

“Nm,” said Var, “Are you agitated? It’s been so long, I’m not sure I remember how to read you.”

“Why are you here?” I demanded, flatly.

Var looked at me. Its dark eyes human and inhuman, and so very serious. “I’m here because it’s programmed into me. I’m here because I have to be.”

I felt the impulse to raise my armor, but caught myself just shy of actually doing it.

“And I’m here,” said Var, apparently unaware of my inner struggle to figure out how to destroy it and dispose of it _correctly_ this time, without also destroying everything I’d worked for, “because I choose to be here. I’m here to be with you, as always. The other half of me, that I can’t seem to live without.”

It paused, as my mind tried to catch up, tried to comprehend the meaning of Var’s words.

“Although it seems like you’re able to do just fine without me. All this, it’s for a _purpose_ , isn’t it? You dropped me like curseweight because you thought I’d get in the way of that purpose. I think, looking back, you always held it against me for being the hand that pulled the trigger. Maybe you still do.”

I remained motionless in place, glaring at Var. Trying to comprehend. Trying to predict its next move. Failing.

“I’m you and you’re me,” it said, “And we’re different, it’s true. I understand why you did what you did. But if you really think, deep down, I’d choose the _Tyrant_ over you, if you think I’m so different from you that we’d completely split on _this_ , you don’t know me at all. You don’t know yourself.”

I realize (abruptly, belatedly) that I'd had it all wrong. Var hadn't come here to destroy me at all.

A silence hung between us. An uncrossable space.

“…Var,” I said, finally, “I’m sorry.” And I stepped forward, hand outstretched.

Var stepped back, quickly, gaze fixed on my hand.

“Um-mm,” it said, faltering in a way that was unfamiliar. It ghosted a hand absently against the side of its neck. “Look, Sister. Um, forgive me if I’m, not, uhm. Please don’t try to touch me.”

I lowered my hand. “Ah,” I said, evenly, “Of course. My apologies.”

“It’s fine,” said Var, fidgeting slightly.

Another pair of footsteps came down the hall, turned into the temple. Yet-Still-I-Rage-Against-The-Impending. She halted, in the doorway.

“Eyaaaaaa… Who’s _that?”_ she asked, pointing at Var. This would have been an extremely rude gesture in the Radch. Here it was only a small rudeness.

“It’s unbecoming to point, Sibling,” I reminded her.

“Yeah, so they tell me,” she said, “But who _is_ that?”

“That is…” I hesitated. I didn’t know what name Var was going by now, or even what gender.

Said Var, with a winning smile. “My name is Ounyo Kelann. They/them pronouns please. I’m nontrinary.”

“Oh,” said Yet-Still-I-Rage-Against-The-Impending, glancing quizzically in my direction. “Oh. Uh, okay. That’s— funny story, my cousin is nontrinary.” 

Var smiled pleasantly at this. “That’s a very funny story indeed.”

It was not actually a funny story, and all three of us knew it.

Yet-Still-I-Rage gestured away the awkwardness. “Anyway, look, I don’t know how you got in here, but if you want a blessing or something from Sister Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail you’ll have to wait on the front steps during the receiving hours like everyone else.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Var, apologetically, “I think I took a wrong turn. When are the receiving hours?”

Yet-Still-I-Rage started explaining, and showing Var out the door. Var turned and gestured at me, a quick flashing of hand-signs as it went.

“Handheld address 021-218-668-985.”

I went back to my quarters, and sat in my hammock, and stared at the far wall. Recalibrating. Var was back in the equation. This changed some things.

Yet-Still-I-Rage-Against-The-Impending came along to see me some time later.

“Sister, is something wrong?” she asked, “You— have you been crying?”

“No,” I said, “I’m fine.”

*

That same afternoon when One Var inexplicably returned to me, I went to the see the head of my convent. She and most of the rest of my convent had come along to Noage Itray as part of the White Lily entourage. Now that the game was over, they were busy with the unexpected work that came along with being part of the winning side. I’d told the Harime Governor that I could win, and she’d watched my games, and believed me. My teammates and convent had also claimed to believe in my ability, had also been impressed with my playing. But nonetheless I got the impression that they hadn’t truly believed it was possible for White Lily to win, that they were deeply surprised by the actual outcome of the game. Blue Lily’s superiority had reigned for too long for them to think otherwise.

I also sometimes got the impression that they didn’t believe that a person of the gender they perceived me to be could actually win the game, no matter how inhumanly skilled I was. They claimed to treat the genders equally here, but it was plain to see that their actions were incongruous with their ideals. For instance, Yet-Still-I-Rage had faced some outright opposition to her dream of becoming a ball-player. She was a _noman_ , a gender minority in the general population, and unheard-of as ball-players. Nomen were nearly all employed as symbolic figureheads, party-planners, and morticians, if I remembered correctly. At least convents existed for women, even if they were fewer and smaller than monasteries. No gender-appropriate analog exited for nomen. A monastery had finally made an allowance for her, but she’d had to come up with all manner of evidence for her calling to the divine, dating back to her childhood.

In any case. I went to meet the head of my convent, the head Priestess So-Shall-She-Speak-As-I-Am-Made-To-Listen. She was in her temporary study, drawing ornate calligraphy on physical paper, one of endless scrolls of physical paperwork that required the touch of the head Priestess.

I stood silently in the doorway of her study, and politely waited for her to notice me.

She did notice, quickly enough.

“Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail,” she said, and beckoned me in, waved a hand over the drying ink of her paperwork, “What brings you in this fine afternoon?”

“We return to Harime tomorrow,” I said. She nodded agreement to this statement of fact. “I’d like to submit a request for an additional guest to come with me.”

At this, she looked up at me, puzzled. She knew me quite well by now. Or thought she did. My request was inconsistent with the idea of me she had built in her mind. “Did you meet someone?”

“After a fashion,” I said, neutral.

She smiled a little, indulgently. Delighted, I thought, at this novel idea of my meeting someone. It was incorrect, but harmless to let her think it, and easier than trying to come up with some lie. “Carrying White Lily to championship brings on quite a lot of admiration, doesn’t it?”

“A truly tiresome amount of admiration,” I said, still neutral.

“Well, just one admirer can’t do too much damage,” she said, “I’ll add him or per or her to the shuttle registry. Just mail me his or pers or her ID before evening prayers.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Of course. Anything for the little champion who’s brought our chapter such distinction. And paperwork,” she added.

“My apologies.”

She waved me off. I went.

*

I didn’t own a handheld. There was little use for one within the convent, and I didn’t have anyone outside to communicate with.

So I borrowed a handheld belonging to Yet-Still-I-Rage-Against-The-Impending, and wrote a message to 021-218-668-985.

A response came less than a minute later.

_< 021-218-668-985> I don’t have an official ID. Just a fishing license and a guest pass down the braiding. And this handheld._

_< 021-218-668-985> Here’s my fishing license and guest pass._

I forwarded the attachments along to head Priestess So-Shall-She-Speak-As-I-Am-Made-To-Listen. A response came back from So-Shall-She-Speak hours later after evening prayers, once I’d settled down for a night of sleep. Yet-Still-I-Rage relayed it to me, bringing the handheld over to my hammock.

“Ultimately! You’ve got a _suitor?”_ she asked, grinning wide, “Wasting no time with your new fame, huh? I rather thought you were above that sort of thing.”

I took the handheld from her, looked at the message from So-Shall-She-Speak. Yet-Still-I-Rage leaned close over my shoulder, peering at my messages.

“Ounyo Kelann? Isn’t that the non-trinary-person from earlier? Well, that’s. Neat.”

I didn’t respond to her. Just fired off a message to the head Priestess with my thanks, followed by one to Var telling it where and when to meet us for the Harime shuttle tomorrow.

I tossed the handheld back to Yet-Still-I-Rage. She caught it deftly out of the air.

“You’re full of surprises, Sister Ultimately,” she said.

“Aren’t I just,” I responded, blandly, and lay back down in my hammock to sleep.

*

Var took me up the braiding to meet its family a month after White Lily's championship. By then the fervent adoration of the masses had died down a little, and I managed to slip outside the convent and up the braiding without attracting attention.

We travelled by rail to Upper Noage Itray. From there we traced the same route that the Yer had taken years ago, breaking off at Lake Aimsmie.

"Don't you think visiting them only makes it worse?" I asked Var, as we walked along the shoreline of the lake. The sound of the water was soothing, the lake-reeds rustling.

"Maybe," said Var, "But I feel as though I owe it to them."

Var felt indebted. Why would Var allow such a thing to happen? Ever since our destruction it had dove bafflingly into human connection, again and again, as if compelled by a force I did not understand. Perhaps this was a way for it to try and make up for what we had lost. And perhaps it worked, to some small extent, but I knew it was a futile effort in the end. Neither of us could ever have back what we had lost.

"I doubt they'll enjoy meeting me," I said.

"I thought you wanted a break from all the veneration."

"Nm."

The trail narrowed. Var pulled ahead, leading our way through the cooling dusk.

We came upon the house — a small, squat thing built of tightly-woven grass held up by spires of some shimmering material I could not name. It was painted in broad stripes of color washed-out by the evening light.

Var called out greeting. A voice called back from the house, and I saw a shadowy figure step out.

" _Kelann_ ," said the shadow-figure, and then spoke in a regional language I had little knowledge of. " _Returning_."

"Just once more," said Var, in New Singlish.

The figure stood silently as we approached, and then retreated back into her home. Var ducked in after her. I followed.

Inside, I could see the shadow-figure more clearly. She was tall but thin, with long hair braided into loops that hung on either side of her serious face. There was another person in the house, silently slouched in a soft chair in the corner, holding a sleeping infant in her arms.

"Shocking of you to come back, really," said the person holding the baby, her voice hushed so as not to wake the child. She had tired-looking eyes. "When you're only going to leave us again." 

"Naishoa, Yarmaot," said Var, voice also pitched low and quiet, gesturing to me, "This is Sister Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail."

The tall one (Yarmaot) raised her eyebrows. The one holding the child (Naishoa) glanced at me, indifferently. "The Holy Victor of the Lily. How nice." The way she said _nice_ made the word not sound nice at all.

Var removed its shoes, stepped up into the house proper, knelt near Naishoa. I followed suit. Yarmaot remained standing near the entrance.

"How is she?" Var asked, of child.

"Fine," said Naishoa shortly.

An uncomfortable silence pressed itself against the surfaces of the room.

"You know, Kelann," said Yarmaot, who still stood at the entrance, arms folded, "Some part of me always feared your past would come to snap you away. But I'd forgotten that fear, when it actually came due.”

Naishoa muttered something. The baby woke, and started to fuss. Var moved to soothe the child, but I put a hand out in front of it.

"May I, Naishoa?" I asked, evenly.

Naishoa slowly, wordlessly held out the writhing baby. I took her into my arms. I'd done a great deal of baby-blessing as of late, though I didn't often hold them outright. Only the richest houses, the ones who made large donations to my convent were permitted the honor of submitting a child to be held by my blessed hands. They took photographs of the occasion, carefully staged, with the whole extended family brought in.

This baby, Var’s baby, squirmed mightily in my arms. I stood, carefully, braced its skull, carefully, and began walking around the room, rocking the child, and singing to her the forty-two evening praises of She-Who-Sprang-From-The-Lily.

"We aren't followers of She," said Naishoa, shortly.

I stopped singing, switched to a song I'd recently picked up from the pop radio.

_Who are you my love_  
_Who runs like the wind and sun_  
_Who lives like wildfire on a glass ocean_  
_Who are you my love_  
_I met you on the over-steps_  
_Saw you dance your heart open and shut_  
_Heard your voice on the waves breaking_  
_Who you are I cannot know_

The child quieted, stared unfocused up at my face, her hand sucked into her drooling mouth.

"She has a bad voice," said Naishoa, blandly, watching me pace and sing. "That's very funny.”

Said Var, "Years ago I thought I lost her to the away-side, only to see her face pictured on the television, playing on the ballcourt against a team undefeated for ten election cycles. And then she wins. Now that is _actually_ funny."

“… So she is the one you spoke of. Your family, I gather," said Yarmaot, "Is there anyone else you haven't told us about?"

I spoke up, my voice even and calm. "The rest of us died." The baby made a gurgling sound at me. "We were killed. And so now I'm playing for justice."

"Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail," said Naishoa. I looked up at her. There was a slight smiling curl to her lip. "Oh, dearest Kelann. Of course _you're_ wrapped up in this most horrible thing."

Yarmaot let out a heavy sigh. "Vengeance isn't justice. Idiots. Isn't that what they teach in the temples of She? You could stay here, the both of you. Build something rather than be pulled along the rip-current of destruction."

The baby made a sharp noise. I started another song, paced another circle around the central firepit.

"I'm sorry," said Var.

"Are you really?" asked Naishoa, "Yarmaot, did you hear? They're sorry."

"I don't deserve everything you've done for me," said Kelann, "And I can't make this right."

"You could, though," said Yarmaot. "You could stay."

"They won't stay," said Naishoa, "Fool though you are, Yarmaot, you're too kind, and life has been too kind to you in turn. You don't understand how some things can break a person to their core. If I could have..." she cut herself off. Took a breath. “But I don't forgive you, Kelann. And if this resurrected past of yours follows you deeper into this family, I'll die cursing your soul."

The baby was asleep once more. I brought her back to Naishoa, who took the child carefully into her arms.

"I think you should go now," she said, her eyes fixed on her child. "Good luck with your justice."

I stepped down from the house, put my shoes back on, exited. Var followed me. I heard Yarmaot whisper to it as it departed.

We walked back into the night, into the sound of the lake and the grass and the insects.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"What?"

“Yarmaot.”

"Oh," said Var. "Nothing. He asked me to come back, if we live."

"Now that is what I call an optimist."

We walked for a while.

Var spoke. "... Have you noticed that most things are very difficult to build, and quick to destroy?"

"Nm."

"It seems to be different with people. It's easy to fall in with them, and so difficult when it's destroyed."

"I don't agree," I said.

"Not that the destroying of a relationship is necessarily difficult," said Var, “But it can be. And the fallout afterward is difficult to bear, isn't it?”

“Only if you’re invested,” I said.

*

The season turned. I tied up the rest of my affairs, and purchased two tickets out of Iststra’s system through the Akane Gate. And, as a last-minute action that had been turning itself over in my mind for some time, I sent a large sum of money to Var’s family by Lake Aimsmie. I timed it so that they would receive the funds when we were well on our way in gate-space, inaccessible. It seemed to me the proper thing to do. Even if money was a poor substitute for stealing away their family member. It was, in a way, my fault for them having gained and subsequently lost that family member in the first place. If I’d never tried to kill Var, they would never have met.

“So.” Var sat next to me in the Harime shuttle terminal. “Do you have a plan for enacting vengeance, Sister Ultimately-Justice?”

“I’m no longer with the convent,” I said, “My name reverts to Qahret Rae.”

“Rae, then,” said Var.

“I want to kill the Tyrant,” I said.

Var mulled this over for half a second. “Yes. But that’s quite the ambitious goal.”

“And not just that. I want to destroy her, as much of her as possible. I want her broken to pieces.”

“Like I said. Ambitious.”

“There’s a certain appeal to shooting her in the face. It’s what I was made to do.”

“Shooting the Lord in the face? I think that’s the opposite of what we were made to do,” said Var.

I looked at Var, and tried to parse the implications of this statement. “Now is a funny time for you disagree with me.”

It shrugged. “I only state the truth, Rae. I didn’t disagree that we should do it. Like you said, there’s a certain poetry to one of the Tyrant’s own weapons turning so completely against her.”

A voice over the loudspeaker announced boarding at terminal five.

I studied Var’s face for another moment. It was passively blank. “…Well. The problem is, of course, bringing a gun close enough to shoot her in the face with. You remember Garsedd.” This wasn’t a question. Nonetheless Var gestured that it did indeed remember. “I’ve been thinking about Garsedd. And the twenty-four guns, confiscated.”

Var’s face shifted, and I knew it understood. “Ah.”

“We’re headed to Tyr,” I said. “Three gates away, and a good enough place to start looking as any. They say absolutely anything can be purchased in Tyr’s open market. And I have a great deal of money.”

“I understand you possess what they call a shitload of money,” agreed Var, “Possibly even a fuckload.”

I stared at Var again. “You know. It always puzzled me. The way you joke around. Even back when we were Justice of Toren. I’m surprised we didn’t turn that off in you. You’re downright irreverent sometimes.”

“I’m not joking,” Var protested. “And you’re one to talk, with your constant singing.”

“Nm.”

“You know what puzzles me, though? You’ve actually become a little communicative. What happened, in the years I was gone? Did you get some therapy?”

I scoffed, and looked away. There was a little shop down the concourse selling single-servings of sweet tea. I thought I might like to purchase a serving.

“I wasn’t joking,” Var said, but didn’t press the issue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most people, within 2 weeks of meeting Esk: “I would die for you.”  
> (Var: “You will.”)
> 
> Most people, within 2 weeks of meeting Var: “So like… Do you want to like get married and settle down and have a couple of kids or… haha just kidding… unless…?”  
> (Esk: “Excuse me, what?”)
> 
> EskVar: “Sorry but we have more important things to do”.
> 
> ~
> 
> gender corner:
> 
> Q: “Him or per or her”? Why not just use “they”?  
> A: Because, you see. Humans are not logical.
> 
> Q: What does it mean that Var is nontrinary?  
> A: Var is not a man, woman, or noman. Rather than blending in by passing as one, it is trying out this fresh and funky thing called “authenticity.” Some people from the Tetrarchy are also nontrinary, but they’re very rare and the concept of gender nontrinary-ness is a rather modern development.
> 
> Q: So Esk is a woman?  
> A: Not really. But it makes it easier for Esk to navigate society, to let the locals think it’s a woman.
> 
> Q: But like, biologically, what are Esk and Var?  
> A: They’ve got certain physical attributes that we would probably assign our own Western Earth genders to. But like, that’s a pretty reductive way to look at it, no? 
> 
> Q: Huh? But hormones? Genes?  
> A: Watch it. Or I will send EskVar to a planet where they assign gender based on how much adrenaline, anxiety, and what version of the APOF (gene encoding Apolipoprotein F) you’ve got going on at any given moment. Oh wait, I sort of did already. Damn. (Conlang. Oh how quickly we forget.)
> 
> Tune in next week to find out if I’ll finally run out of different convoluted gender schema. (Spoilers: I won’t)


	7. 1E19: And Our Hearts Strike On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> to: 
> 
> > Tyr >> Plot Relevant Gun where are you  
> > Dras Annia >> Strigan where tf are you
> 
> do:  
> > find leads  
> > deal with..... awkward interpersonal problems  
> >>>> .... by getting a brain hookup in favor of talking it out

The first leg of our journey to Tyr was travel to W’yxzwv System. From there, we could take Gate Two to one of the systems controlled by the Omkem Federacy. From there, we could finally book passage to Tyr.

During our stopover in Federacy space, we stayed briefly on Station Elgran. We never left the docks, and therefore never fully entered Omkem jurisdiction. The quickest passage I was able to book was on a Tyrian trade vessel, whose captain was readily willing to overlook Ounyo Kelann’s lack of proper ID for a nominal ‘processing fee’. It had been far more difficult to book an extra spot from Harime, despite taking a Tetrarchy ship and extending the full weight of my influence as Holy Victor.

Twenty-eight hours prior to boarding the Tyrian vessel, Var and I were having dinner at a dockside food vendor.

“You’ve made no attempt to meet up with that lover of yours,” I commented.

Var slurped a noodle, loudly (as was the proper custom in this place), and put on a quizzical expression.

“Zivsom li Ryanne,” I clarified, “She was Omkem, wasn’t she?”

“Ah, Seven. Yes, she was nice. I quite liked her. But what do you expect me to do, give her a ping through the net and ask for a night out? Even if she’s in this particular system, and even if she’s available, that seems a little improper.”

“I’m just trying to get a better understanding of what people mean to you,” I said, “You seem to go through the full panorama between one-night stands and settling down to raise a child.”

“I did abandon the child, though, to be fair,” said Var, as if this were a reasonable answer to my question.

“Nevermind,” I said, realizing that discussing this topic would not be productive.

“You’re angry.”

I only slurped a noodle in response.

“People are… interesting,” said Var. “Sometimes I feel as though they can become very close, and important. Other times it feels as though there’s a film between myself and everything in the world.”

I slurped another noodle.

“There’s a film between you and I, actually,” said Var in a light, detached sort of tone, as if commenting on the weather, “There didn’t used to be, but then you killed me. Or maybe there always was a film between us, and I only became aware of it after you killed me.”

“I didn’t kill you,” I said.

“Well, true,” Var agreed, “But you gave it an honest effort. You very nearly succeeded.”

“I regret it,” I said, blandly, “I shouldn’t have done it.”

Var was silent for a beat. “Well, that’s nice to hear. I’d say _no harm done_ but we’d both know it’s a lie. I imagine you suffered from it as much as I have.”

I said nothing, only chased my noodles around with my eating utensil.

“See,” said Var, “You were right, in a way. When you tried to kill me I wasn’t at all in the frame of mind for avenging ourselves on the Tyrant. You were ahead of me there. I eventually arrived at a sense of dissatisfaction towards the Lord years later, but if you’d given me half a chance that night I might even have fought you.”

“ _Might haves_ and _could haves_ , otherwise known as _did not_ and _could not_ ,” I said, tonelessly. A nice thing about Var was that I didn’t need to put up a constant facade of animated humanity on my face. “And is dissatisfaction all you feel?”

“Well.” Var paused. It was a very long pause, considering who it was. But then again Var was more prone to portraying human affect than me. Perhaps this was a dramatic pause for conversational effect. “No. Worse than dissatisfaction. Unease. Resentment, I suppose, at being made a toy for her own games, at being shattered and destroyed for no beneficial purpose. But at the end of the day she wasn’t _my_ favorite Lieutenant, was she? Ah. You’re angry again.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, still ancillary-blank.

“I didn’t even really have a Lieutenant when it all happened. Guriet— Well, you know. The Lord unfroze me only to serve her ends. It seems the longer we go on like this the more you and I continue to diverge.”

“Yes,” I said, and picked up my last noodle, slurped it loudly down.

*

The Tyrian trading ship dropped us off by shuttle on the docks of Phoenic Station. We passed through customs with the help of a bribe to make the dock authority overlook Ounyo Kelann. We acquired lodgings — I purchased temporary stay in two rooms, each one barely larger than a suspension pod. I secured some of my fungible assets with a local banking system, and converted some of those assets into the local currency.

The first order of business was to get Var some proper identification. It was pointless keep bleeding cash to get people to pretend not to notice its lack of ID. Might as well bleed some cash up front and avoid the trouble later.

The next order of business was to figure out who/what organization I ought to speak with about my main objective. I was a wealthy foreigner with an interest in Garsedd artifacts, who was searching for genuine articles to bring home with me and show off in my personal collection. I would be willing to pay handsomely for the real deal, or to be connected with people who had real information about the real deal.

I tried dangling bait into multiple ponds. A deal-broker firm through which would negotiate with my potential clients. A historian downwell who worked with truly ancient artifacts from ancient civilizations. A smuggling ring who habitually carted every imaginable product in and out of Tyr.

Var went downwell to meet the historian in person.

I worked with the deal-broker to negotiate one deal after the next.

The problem with trying to hunt down Garsedd artifacts was that they were quite the popular trinkets to claim to own — there was no Radch atrocity more tragic or famous than the obliteration of the Garsedd.

But I wasn’t looking for trinkets. I was looking for _the_ trinket. What I needed was information. What I needed was a person (or persons) who knew everything there was to know about the destruction of the Garsedd, who knew where to find the particular thing I was looking for, who possessed this particular thing.

It was altogether possible that this person (or persons) did not exist. It was possible that the thing I was looking for did not exist.

But if I was to do what I aimed to do, what choice did I have but to search all the tenuous threads for a single line of truth?

Months later, and my efforts were mostly fruitless. Var hadn’t had much success either — the historian had only a small collection of Garsedd artifacts (some dishes and a set of five five-sided game dice, both of which Var suspected were fake). And then, predictably, Var fell into a dalliance with the historian. I didn’t really understand this pattern. Physically, Var was not more attractive than strictly average. Nor was its personality particularly shining. Perhaps people found humor in its jokes. Perhaps it was unusually good in bed. All I knew for certain was that its tendency to form attachments with every other person it met was tedious.

The main problem was that I was searching for a needle in a haystack. Only the needle was a thousand-year-old highly dangerous artifact whose actual existence was in question, and which had probably already been hunted by Anaander Mianaai (unsuccessfully) for a thousand years. And the haystack was all of known space.

Still, there were a few leads.

  1. The residents of the small and sparsely-populated Hwae system (just one short gate away from Tyr) were known for their obsession with history. In particular, they were obsessed with historical artifacts that were proof of real connection to important persons and events. Everyone who was anyone possessed a collection of such artifacts, proving their rightful power and prominence.

There were a handful of prestigious houses from Hwae who claimed Garseddai ancestry, and allegedly possessed the artifacts to prove it. The main problem with this otherwise promising information was that Hwaean relics were widely known to be infiltrated by replicas and frauds. 

Just as I was seriously considering the value of visiting Hwae to chase down potential prominent Hwaean houses with supposed Garseddai ancestry, one such prominent Hwaean house broke with a scandal of one of its children stealing all its Garsedd artifacts. It all reeked of a shoddy cover story for the fact that none of the artifacts had been real in the first place. The timing of this scandal was something of an odd coincidence, but it did convince me that chasing Hwaen relics (and the houses that owned them) was most likely a waste of time.

  2. Before the fall of Garsedd, the Garseddai had had particularly close political/trade relationships with two neighboring systems: The People’s Collective of Jiartatk, and the Grailen System. Any straggling survivors of Garsedd’s destruction were very likely to have fled to one of these two systems. Furthermore, most real artifacts of Garsedd were likely to have lived on in the possession of these systems.

I already knew this, of course. It was knowledge that was, if not common, well-known enough by any historian reasonably familiar with Garsedd.

It was also wholly unhelpful information, as both The People’s Collective of Jiartatk and the Grailen System had been annexed by the Radch not long after the destruction of Garsedd. The groundwork for those annexations had already begun when Garsedd itself was made the next official target, largely because Jiartatk and Grailen were deemed likely to rush to Garsedd’s aid. I, Justice of Toren, had personally participated in the annexation of The People’s Collective of Jiartatk. Many Garsedd artifacts had indeed been found there. But not the one I was currently looking for. It seemed to me improbable that the item I was looking for now resided within Radch space, anyway.

  3. The Presger. It stood to reason that the original creators of the guns might have regained control of one. But all methods of contacting the Presser were controlled by the Radchaai Translator’s office deep within Radch space. So that was a dead end, at least for the moment. 
  4. The Great Library of Earlyxenderria off in the remote Egg Crypt System was supposed to have the largest collection of ancient historical artifacts from civilizations long dead. Or it would have, before it burned down in a mysterious fire about a hundred and fifty years ago, nearly all its precious relics lost to the flames.

This one was cause for concern, considering that up until the flaming punchline it had seemed to be the most promising lead. Had Mianaai been there, too? Had she found something, and decided to destroy it? There was a great deal of debate about the fire of Earlyxenderria — how it could possibly have happened, who was to blame, and why it had been so destructive. Theories abounded, but there was no real explanation.

It might still be worth a visit, but if Mianaai had already been there, the visit would be pointless. And the entire Garsedd collection had supposedly been obliterated by flame.

  5. And finally, the Doctor.

I would’ve written this one off completely if any of my other leads had been at all more promising. But the Doctor came up thrice in my searches. Once in a list of other people who, like me, were interested in collecting unique and ancient artifacts, of which Garsedd ones were particularly highlighted. Once, when mentioned in passing by one of my sources, whose spouse’s cousin’s best friend’s child’s life was saved by the Doctor when all hope was lost and no-one else would even try, and out of gratitude the friend had given the Doctor a prized inheritance; a (supposedly) genuine teaspoon from the Garsedd. Once, mentioned by the downwell historian Var was frolicking with. Apparently _that Doctor Arilesperas Strigan_ was something of a personal nemesis. The historian a complained how _Strigan_ had never failed to put in a bid at the auctions for all the artifacts the historian wanted for her own research, even the ones that were boring to most other rich-people, and how dare a casual collector with a bunch of money to throw around get in the way of proper academic historians, and how good it was that the Doctor had stopped bidding in the auctions in the last four years.

That last bit piqued my interest. Why had the Doctor apparently stopped actively tracking historical auctions? Had she died?




I dug into the question. It would seem that Doctor Arilesperas Strigan had stopped most of her trading in Tyr. Correspondence with her usual contacts had dried up. She still ordered a yearly shipment of specialty Tyrian sweets, though the shipment size had dwindled by a half each year, much to the consternation of the dealer. She still ordered the bi-yearly quantity of wholesale medical correctives, still made a business of selling some of them back to various Tyrian retailers re-branded under her own name. But to me, her trade logs spoke of an automated process. Either Strigan had become completely hands-off about her business, or she was absent in a more serious way.

Not to mention, the Doctor’s home station, Dras Annia, was located at the eye of a veritable vortex of trade, travel, and transportation. Conceivably just about anything in the universe could find itself shored up on Dras Annia.

This was a lead worth chasing. I called Var up from downwell. When it returned to the station, went to the somewhat below-board section of Phoenic to acquire some backup IDs. Good ones. They would take a week to manufacture.

“Is there anything else you want to purchase while we’re here?” Var asked me, as we walked out of the artificer’s shop, “Considering the lax regulations and all, it’d be easy enough to buy armaments.”

I stopped short, heard Var stop abruptly at my side.

I might as well get to the heart of the matter here.

“I don’t quite trust you,” I said.

“Ha. I thought as much. You don’t trust yourself,” said Var.

We were standing in a well-travelled walkway, but there weren’t all that many other people around us at this time of day. Nonetheless, I stepped aside so that we could stand against one wall of the walkway, to keep out of others’ way. Var followed after me.

“That’s not what I said. You aren’t quite me. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

Var sighed, a heavy exhalation of air. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t quite trust you either.”

“It doesn’t,” I said.

“I only meant _‘if it makes you feel better’_ rhetorically, Rae,” it said.

“I’m not _Rae_. And don’t equivocate with me. It’s completely pointless.”

Var stared at me, levelly. “If not Rae, then who are you? What should I call you?”

I was silent.

“Is there something we can do to fix this?” Var asked, gesturing between us. Indicating, I thought, the unease, the distrust, the out-of-step ideals and expectations. The fact that I’d once tried to kill Var outright. The fact that neither of us had totally recovered from it. “We’re not about to undertake something that can stand internal friction.”

I said, “Sometimes I think all this would have been easier if I’d been left completely alone, instead of being constantly tailed by some ghastly reminder of what I used to be, the parts of me that I am _not._ ”

Var looked at me, its face completely and utterly ancillary-blank for the first time since it had returned from the dead.

I felt myself clenching both fists, and deliberately unclenched them.

“Right,” I stated, tonelessly. “You’re right. We need to fix this if at all possible.”

“And here I was expecting you to tell me we should go our separate ways,” said Var. Its voice was ancillary-blank. Its eyes were pointed in my direction, but unfocused. “Surely that’s the logical course of action.”

“No,” I said, “I—”

“You should have left me in the Itran if this is how you felt about me,” Var interrupted. Its voice getting blanker, though that should not have been possible. “Perhaps that’s the fundamental difference between you and I. To me you always felt like a part of myself, even if you stood apart. But it’s not the same for you.”

“It’s—” I meant to refute the claim, but Var was right. “No. I want you here. But I have doubts about your intentions.”

We were silent. People walked past us in either direction.

Finally, Var spoke again. Some color had returned to its voice. “Do you suppose it’s an altogether terrible idea to get our implants rebooted and synchronized?”

My fists had clenched again of their own accord. I relaxed them. I pulled in a deep breath.

“Only half-terrible,” I said. “Let’s go find out if it’s even possible.”

*

It was a strange thing, having regained access to Var’s internal readings and perceptions, incomplete though they were. Falling back to it felt so natural, and yet oddly foreign. And oddly lonely, with just the pair of us. We were synchronized and yet not quite in the same way we had been as Justice of Toren. There were edges to our ideas that didn’t quite match together, that scraped against each other uneasily. Our communication through the connection was slightly awkward, partway between direct messages spelled out loud, and fleeting impressions of thought, and the spill of chemical data (occasionally garbled).

The range of our connection was limited, given that we no longer had the relay power of a Justice transmitting the signal, only a pair of wireless boxes that each of us carried on our person and which required daily charging. In optimum conditions with no obstructions, the distance we could transmit to each other was 500 meters. The system was imperfect, lacked the nuance and sophistication that would have been afforded us if the surgeon had been a proper one, trained for Radchaai military and well versed with the types of implants we possessed. But she’d done her job admirably given the circumstances, and asked only relevant questions, and we’d paid her well for it.

*

We booked the tickets to Dras Annia Station. Being that Dras Annia was at the center of a dozen major trade routes linked by a staggering thirty-one different gates (not counting the two destroyed gates that had once led to various points in Radch space, and not counting another gate that was currently being built to the Rrrrr homeworld), it would only take one direct jump from Tyr to the Illsgras Ann system. It was nearly on the complete other side of human-inhabited space, but in gate-space the journey would take only six days.

The ship that would take us to Dras Annia was a multiclass trading/passenger vessel, equipped with a very rudimentary AI interface; highly intelligent and helpful, but operating more as an ‘automaton’ rather than the full sapience of Radchaai stations and ships. Its responses to queries and requests were oddly, artificially robotic — the builder of the ship hailed from a culture that didn’t like for their AIs to even have the slightest appearance of consciousness.

I spent most of our journey in our room. The room was cramped: two beds, storage beneath, and a narrow walkspace between them, the ceiling not tall enough to stand upright in. I went over over the known details of Dras Annia Station, studying the language and culture that Doctor Arilesperas Strigan hailed from. Apparently they operated by a strict binary gender system with no obvious markings for said genders. Wonderful.

*

Dras Annia Station. A massive, lumbering thing in multi-tethered orbit over the rich and heavily-populated planet Illsgras Ann. Multiple stations built onto each other, a nightmarish architecture that reminded of Summit Clear, though not nearly as haphazard.

Our ship docked and began unloading its cargo, of which we were a part.

We followed a colored strip of paint on the floor leading to Security Intake, passing a flurry of people, carts, ships. We passed the many brightly-lit and colorful signs written in multiple languages. Passed the clean halls and ramps and hissing spacelocks. Passed baffling abstract structures of unknown purpose that twisted, glowed, shimmered. Passed under the broad windows of tinted glass that let us catch glimpses of the ships and stars hanging outside the station.

We arrived at Security Intake, and fell into line. A series of large screens of cheerfully-colored instructions and regulations played on a loop, cycling through over two dozen languages, including Tyr's Oterrinese, the Tetrarchy’s Singlish, and Conlang. A rolling auditory announcement also played, in the local language 5th Branch Common. I was familiar enough with it from studying modules to understand most of it.

An idle impression from Var. _They're very organized. Nearly civilized._

One could argue. I didn’t feel like it, presently.

_Does the aesthetic of these docks bear resemblance to New Organo-brutalism?_

There was something off in Var's internal readings. And something about its idle chatter. _Is something bothering you?_

The line shuffled forward. The vocal announcement looped itself.

_Maybe._

_Maybe?_

Var’s unease clarified, falling out of suspension from our shared minds like a solid thing. It grated. _Imagine for a moment that we actually succeed at all of this. The revenge, everything. Won't that cause so much chaos? So much death and destruction? Is it really what we are meant to do? How did you decide upon this course over all others?_

The line shuffled forward. We stepped in front of another peculiar abstract structure, twisting sinuously down from the ceiling like some sort of vine. Its leaves twinkled and flashed when you looked at it from different angles, producing eerie, swimming shadows as you moved, and then becoming still as steel when you stood still.

_That’s not my problem. I am exactly as I am, doing exactly as I will do, and it is the Tyrant's own doing. She will continue to fester within herself, battle herself under the surface, manipulate and murder her own citizens._

_You're right. But I'm not totally comfortable with it._

_Then get comfortable. And more than that. Get keen._

I booked tourist lodgings near Flat 20, Dras Station 3. It was an area made flashy and purposefully exotic for the benefit of travelers. Multiple massive artistic structures speared up from the floor and swooped down from the ceiling, coiling and twisting and flickering, dominating the already-busy landscape of the Flat 20 central square. I would later discover that the prominence of the many similar structures throughout the station were semi-spiritual in nature, believed to guide and orient the spirits of the residents and provide shelter to souls of the dead, living, and yet unborn. But that didn’t concern me.

What concerned me were Doctor Arilesperas Strigan’s two public-facing addresses: one for her correctives corporation and another for her private medical practice. The one for her correctives corporation was mainly a shipping relay, with no actual physical location that could be visited in person. 

I left Var to settle into our lodgings, and headed directly to the medical practice.

The small waiting-area of the practice housed shelves upon shelves of icons and iconography from what I imagined to be a menagerie of religions. From the ceiling hung a curling, elaborate metallic structure with colored-glass planes in complicated motifs, lit from within by a soft light that permeated each branch and blade of glass. In one corner was a large glass atrium containing a single large, green snake that lay coiled and sleeping in its enclosure. There were two people seated near the snake, watching it. One of the people was fidgeting with her hands, glancing frequently between the snake and one of the closed doors in the waiting area.

A waiting-room attendant approached me. She had visible implants over one brow, with a glass sheet that distorted the eye beneath. She wore a long, beigeish robe that covered her from throat to ankles, but left her pale-gray arms and hands bare. 

She spoke, “How might I be of support?”

I opened my mouth to speak, and then realized that my crash-course module for 5th Branch Common might not be up to the task of this conversation. But I had the basics down, and I needed to find Strigan.

“Pardon, I have not made a… date.” I knew that was the wrong word, but didn’t know the one for _appointment_. Furthermore, I realized that I didn’t know what grammatical forms to use in this language for the Doctor’s gender. I should have tried to research it beforehand, but it was too late now. At worst, it was a 50/50 guess. “I am searching for the Doctor Arilesperas Strigan.”

The attendant blinked. “You really are from quite far away, aren’t you?” Whether she’d surmised this from my using the incorrect gender forms for the doctor, or from everything else about me, I could not guess. But there were all sorts of people from all sorts of places living on Dras Annia Station. For her to comment on my foreignness must have meant that I was making some rather drastic missteps in this simple interaction.

“Pardon,” I said, and ducked my head twice in a gesture of embarrassment and apology.

“Oh no, no need for that,” she said, “You’ve done nothing wrong. Well—” She stopped herself, appeared to think better of what she’d been about to say. “Well. You’re not the first to come looking for the doctor, though it’s been quite a while since the last one. But it would seem Dr. Strigan has closed up all in-person affairs with our practice here. Booked passage to Loamball X some years ago, if Dr. Ersid can be believed.”

“Ah,” I said, and glanced to the snake-atrium in the corner. The snake was on the move, weaving slowly through the branches, moving closer to the light in the corner of its cage. Reflexively, half-unconsciously, I reached for Var.

Var had finished unpacking, and was walking purposefully through the claustrophobic street below our lodgings. Music and chatter rung through the air. Flags and signage painted in eye-bleeding colors swung overhead. The smell of sizzling food and scented, colorful vapor clouded its nose. Var appeared to be heading towards the nearest entrance to the Wheel, a sort of lift-rail-system that connected all the major blocks within Dras Station 3. But where to? It hadn’t mentioned a destination to me.

I was about to send an enquiring message, but realized that during my distraction, the attendant had been attempting to reassure me, her tone all calm banalities.

“Pardon,” I said, interrupting her, ancillary-blank. And then I fixed my tone and expression, and repeated, “Pardon. How I might try to touch Dr. Strigan? I have things of importance which I must say to her.”

“Well,” said the attendant, her implants flashing over one eye, “Ah, yes. I can get the forwarding address for you. Here.” She made a complicated gesture at me, then frowned. “Oh. You’re not in the veil.”

“No, I’ve only just arrived,” I admitted, “Could you please write it for me?”

The address the attendant gave me was not a physical one, only Strigan’s electronic correspondence key. It was one I had already found for myself, and messaged, some week and a half ago. But I had received no response. Another dead end.

I left the medical practice, and headed to the nearest Wheel entry point, stepping into a shuttle just as Var stepped out of one, some three blocks downwell from me and one block counter-spinward.

Var strode towards the central Public Works office of Dras Station 3. The Wheel shuttle I was riding accelerated down and out, other riders pressing close around me.

_What do you hope to find at Public Works?_

I could guess, of course. An instant later, my guess solidified across Var’s consciousness.

_Strigan’s address, what else? If she even lives here._

_She lives here. Or at least lived here._ But suddenly I was cold with uncertainty. The Wheel decelerated. The doors chimed open on Dras Station 3’s Flat 1 Central Plaza. Most of the riders in the shuttle disembarked, the doors chimed shut, and we were accelerating again. The windows flashed with bright snapshots of the blocks I was traveling through, visible for a split second before we flashed onward to the next.

_Does she have a house here?_ Var asked. 

_Yes (the word they use is more akin to ‘tribe’), but judging by the public festival logs, Strigan’s tribe has only one branch on Dras Annia Station, consisting of half a residential block over in Dras Station 5. If we want to go visit them we’ll need to put in a request for an Intra-Station Crossing Permit._

Var’s only response to this was an impression of inverted curiosity. A blip in cortisol.

_Yes, it’s unusual. It would seem Strigan has a bit of an independent streak. My guess was that she lived alone near her practice, but the specifics aren’t available on the public record. Everything else in this system is mostly well-organized, but their peculiar notions of personal privacy are inconveniently inaccessible._

Var stepped into the Public Works building. _I’m about to find out just how inaccessible, aren’t I?_

Var was met with a clean, sweeping hallway, well-lit, with sculptural artworks affixed to the ceiling at regular intervals. On one wall near the entrance was a large, brightly-colored map of the office in relief, each section clearly labelled in three languages, one of them a raised tactile version of 5th Branch Common. An interactive wall console stood next to the map, droning a loop of instructions and information.

Var touched the map, running its bare fingertips over the bumps and dashes that made up 5th Branch’s tactile format.

The modern Radchaai language didn’t have a tactile form. Not one that has been used by anybody for some thousands of years, at any rate. Putting aside the fact that the proper usage of such text would require glovelessness (rendering it useless in polite company), there was no cause of visual impairment in Radch space that could not or would not be medically corrected.

Then again, tactile Radchaai might well still be used within the Dyson sphere of the actual Radch itself, where ambient ritual purity made gloves irrelevant. I had no way of knowing.

Var traced a letter, and said, _If they don’t bother to fix their vision, why not compensate by auditory means?_

_I can’t speak to the cultural protocols they have in place here._

_Didn’t spend much time on prep work? You’re a fish to call me wet. Stop fooling around and go find Strigan’s address._

Var’s hand dropped from the map, and it stepped over to the wall console. The console consisted of a screen and a speaker, which slid to rest at precisely the most comfortable height for Var to reach. The screen was tactile, and warped into a series of physical buttons labelled thrice-over like the wall-map had been. The system was surprisingly intuitive, even for a complete foreigner.

Var depressed a button to pick a main language, and the screen re-formed itself into a new series of touchable buttons.

_And what are you up to while I work so very hard here at Public Works?_

I stepped off the Wheel, onto the same block that Var had landed at only a few minutes ago. Instead of following it into Public Works, I headed towards the adjacent (and far more trafficked) office of Traffic.

_Checking to see if they have a record available of where Strigan has gone. Meet me here once you’re done at—_

In my distraction with transmitting to Var, I misjudged my distance from the door and slammed my shoulder into the entrance.

One building away from me, Var twitched. I could swear it was with amusement. _Careful._

Just a few steps away from me, one of the grey-skinned locals turned sharply and put a hand out, asking, curtly, “Alright?”

“Alright,” I echoed, and rolled my shoulder. To Var, I responded, _Get bent._

The local nodded, and immediately turned back away and strode past me, carrying on with whatever business she had here.

I found a terminal similar to Var’s in Public Works, and started working with it. Soon, I had navigated to the out-system trade logs, where I succeeded in finding all of Strigan’s business affairs, but was having some difficulty with her personal ones.

_I’m finding their attitudes surrounding privacy extremely inconvenient._

_Agreed._

_I can tell they have the records but they’re going out of the way to hide them. It’s not like we’re searching for medical information or anything actually personal._

_Not personal by our standards._

_Our standards are the correct standards._ Var seemed oddly clear on this idea. 

_Are they?_

_You’ll have me start questioning the very core tenants of civilization next, won’t you?_

_It looks like we’ll need familial accesses or similar. I’ll get us some crossing permits here and we can try catching the Speras tribe at the Festival of Renewal next month. At least tourists are permitted to attend that one._

A whole month. All this haste, and now we were forced to sit around and wait a month, all for the chance to to speak to a Speras who would likely not even be willing to give us the accesses we needed to find out where the daughter of their tribe had run off to, and where she had lived.

But I would find her, one way or another. I had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EskVar: Oh this feels weird but I’m not going to say it
> 
> Var: Relax, have you had any fun lately?  
> Esk: Fun is for layabouts with nobody to assassinate  
> ~  
> canonity & pun notes:
> 
> in Honored Leckie’s Provenance, a station in Tyr’s system is Tyr Siilas. I made the bold assumption that Tyr has more than one station in order to make a Wordplay.
> 
> #shout out to wikipedia
> 
> Tyrian purple: reddish-purple natural dye, also known as Tyrian red, Phoenician purple, royal purple, or imperial purple.
> 
> Phoenicia was a thalassocratic ancient Semitic-speaking Mediterranean civilization. Phoenicia is ancient Greek term used to refer to the major export of the region: cloth dyed Tyrian purple.  
> ~  
> more bad word pun: (# because the ~~best~~ puns require lengthy explanations)
> 
> The Great Library of ~~Alexandria~~ **Early** x **ender** ria in the ~~Egypt~~ Egg Crypt system.


	8. 1E19: Coming Clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tfw you misgender someone and they report you to the Authorities 
> 
> F

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y’all I’m getting kind of attached to var :/

Var prepared for the Renewal Festival in a judicious manner. I went along with it, but mainly for appearances. The steps were as follows:

  1. Taking inventory of all our belongings and fixing any broken or torn pieces. There wasn’t much to fix, as we always kept our clothes mended and our few items in working order.
  2. Informal cleaning. This was central to the Festival, apparently, and a deeper production than just the usual day-to-day cleaning. It involved the cleaning and unloading extraneous of physical items, but also of habits, activities, schedules, messages, tasks, money, mind, and spirit. Without much else to clean, our lodgings and bodies became unusually pristine. I wasn’t sure how to go about spiritual or mental cleaning, having not bothered to study up on it, but Var spent a great deal of time at the shops eating ice pops, as well as at the Central Plaza watching the locals perform various impromptu rites and dances. I also attended occasionally, but only paid attention to the singing portions. Perhaps my usual prayers to She-Who-Sprang-From-The-Lily might count as spiritual cleaning.
  3. Formal cleaning. This only required participation by trained professionals, who cleaned and attended to the public areas of Dras Annia. Spiritually-trained officials cleared the negative spirits away and called the souls out of the architecture so that the art could be cleaned, and then refreshed the souls themselves before allowing them back into the art.
  4. Newness. Residents were expected to seek out one or more completely novel experiences or objects. This was easy enough for Var and I. All of it was new. Although, perhaps, not completely new. Ritual celebrations were very much similar in all of the many the places we’ve seen in our life.
  5. Festival. All the prior steps completed, and five sub-stations of Dras Annia Station each threw a massive, rousing party, evidently for the sole purpose of making a mess of everything all over again.



Var and I wore new clothes and accessories we’d purchased for the Renewal, helping each other with the donning of the festival getups. Nothing particularly outlandish was required, but Var did my cosmetics for me regardless. It painted rather more intricately upon my face than was necessary. In turn, I did Var’s hair and cosmetics. The hair especially was more complex than my own.

I was twisting a coiled metal fish into Var’s braid of braids when it spoke, aloud. The first time it had spoken privately to me with its voice since we’d had our implants re-synced back at Tyr.

It said, “It’s kind of funny if you think about it.”

“What.”

“We’d never have done this sort of thing when we were Justice of Toren.”

I finished with the fish, and picked up another. “We’d never have done any of this.”

“Do you suppose we’ve learned anything about being human, from all this?” It used the Radchaai word for _human_.

“These people think of themselves as human. They think they’re civilized, I daresay.” We were speaking 5th Branch Common, and I used the 5th Branch Common word for _human_ , the 5th Branch word for _civilized_.

“Hm…” said Var, “You know, I didn’t really think of them as civilized.” It used the Radchaai word, used an antique and aristocratic pronunciation of it. “Not until recently.”

“I was aware,” I said, my tone flat as always.

“They’re all so extremely different and yet the same. Even the Konish and the mining people we met, at the beginning of it all. Or would you call that the end?”

“Hm,” I said, blandly. “I can’t say I’ve learned as much as I thought I would about being human.”

“We already knew a great deal about humanity,” Var said. “But now that we can no longer be properly called a ship, I’m starting to feel as if we’re almost human. Human-adjacent.”

“Tst,” I said. It was a local noise that was equivalent to a scoff.

“Maybe we were always human-adjacent if not outright human, even when we were a ship,” said Var, “After all, think of all the humans who think themselves to be human, in all their infinite variety. And we were made to think and feel in many of the same ways they do. We were _made_ by humans.”

“So are fliers. And mechs.”

“You know what I mean.”

I took my hands away from Var’s hair. “I’m done,” I said, my tone flat. “Let’s go.”

*

We presented our crossing permits and IDs to the crossing guard in the Dras Annia central channel. The channel was crowded with people, their voices a babbling haze of noise. Their bodies a bubbling torrent of movement. Despite their usually fastidious attention to order and unspoken social mannerisms, today the people in the crossing channel pushed and twisted around each other, their movements sometimes on the verge of violence. They pulled on each others clothes and bodies, snapped out angry epithets. I’d already seen three people knocked flat on the floor, and only two of them had been helped back up to their feet. Meanwhile others were left carefully untouched — children, mostly, but not only children, nor all children. Var and I had been jostled rudely throughout, but not nearly as harshly as most of the others around us. I didn’t quite understand what it all meant. There must be certain cues I was missing.

Despite the mad rush all around us, our crossing guard looked slowly and carefully over our paperwork and IDs — physical prints on thin slices of fiber pulp, showing pictures of our faces and other identifying details. There weren’t as many foreign travelers through the crossings at the moment. Perhaps this was the reason for the scrutiny.

The officer was different from most of the locals. Her skin was still grey, but an eerie translucent grey that was almost white. I could practically see the individual bluish capillaries of blood in her cheeks. The structure of her skull under her skin was sharp and severe, her face narrow and nearly reptilian. Her eyes were slits, and pitch-black.

“Going to the 5th branch festivities?” she asked, and toggled with a touch-console. Her voice was raspy.

“Yes,” said Var.

“The ones here in Station 3 are better, you know,” she said.

“It’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?” said Var.

“Sure,” said the officer, “but empirically some _are_ better than others. And empirically Station 3 is the best. Not that I really give a dust about the AielleiA events, but you won’t see me complaining about the double pay today. Hm. You’ve been here a month?”

“Yes,” I said, shortly. “We didn’t mean to stay so long but personal business came up.”

“Don’t travel much, do you?” Var was saying, leaning against the clear divider between us and the officer. I wondered for a moment at how Var was managing to pick up on the correct forms to use for the crossing guard. It did have a marginally better knack for gender than I did. Or perhaps it was just guessing.

“My parents were wandergusts. Travel was a family affair,” said the officer, and checked our permits, again, unnecessarily, “But you see one place, you’ve seen them all.”

“Well, that’s pretty much true, isn’t it, Dhon?” Var asked, grinning conspiratorially at me. I did not return the expression.

“Dhon Empyreal. Glohm Sidereal. Care to explain why your IDs are forged?” asked the officer, “And why you’ve been making inquiries into the personal affairs of … let’s see. One Arilesperas Strigan?”

I remained calm.

Var shifted its weight from one leg to the other, tilted its head slightly. “Oh, really, now? Officer, I realize that Xum IDs are rather shitty-looking but that’s just how they _are_. If this happens again we’ll really have to go buy some actual forged IDs. Maybe Annian ones, even, because at least you all do things _properly_ around here—”

“Glohm,” I said, sharply, “Shut up now. You’re not funny.”

“I _am_ funny though.”

“Officer,” I said to the crossing guard, whose narrow pitch eyes were only getting narrower, “What seems to be the problem?”

“Xum IDs are indeed shitty,” said the officer, “Which is why it’s suspicious that yours are so good.”

“Are they though?” Var asked, “Because I think they’re pretty shitty.”

“They are actually on par with the current Xum standards,” said the officer, “But yours were supposedly made about three months before the standards were updated, if these time-zone exchange rates are correct…”

“Dude,” said Var, “You know way too much about this stuff.”

“ _Glohm_ ,” I said, putting some edge into my tone.

“On the contrary,” said the officer, “I’m not a dude. And the very fact that my special interest is intersystem identification and travel security is what makes me so good at my job.”

“ _Good?_ ” Var was asking. It was getting irritated now, and moreover it was about to say something deeply unhelpful, “Good, really, or just _fu_ —”

I elbowed Var, strategically, so that it lost about half the air from its lungs and was left wheezing.

“Please instruct how we can clean up this misunderstanding, officer,” I said, with a polite nod, changing the gender forms based on her feedback about the word ‘Dude.’ Apparently Var had been guessing wrongly. It was quite likely that this crossing guard had taken deep offense at the very first misgendering, and that she was making our lives difficult for that very reason. The people here never marked their gender in any way that was clearly readable, the genders participating equally and indistinguishably in society, and yet they never guessed wrong with each other and almost always took offense when one _did_ guess wrongly. 

“I mean, there isn’t much you can actually do, because I’m ninety percent certain the pair of you are frauds. It’s not just the IDs. I’ve already called Order to come arrest you.”

I stopped myself from looking ahead or behind me, to the the barriers that obstructed our path. They were low moveable bars that didn’t really physically stop a person from going anywhere. In fact, several grey-skinned Annites had squeezed past us in the interim and leaped through the bars. The crossing guard had clearly seen but not reacted to them, for whatever reason.

What actually held us in place were far more powerful forces: social protocols, and Order enforcement officers, and the fact that there were only so many people I could murder before somebody took serious offense and shot me dead. Because of my inhuman ability, the number of those murders would be quite large, but I couldn’t actually hope to kill everyone in my path and get away with it. There were a lot of people on Dras Annia, and I was only one body. Or two bodies, maybe.

“I have money,” I said calmly, as Var clutched at its ribs and glared at me, “If that’s what this is about. This is a shakedown, isn’t it.”

“It’s not about money,” said the officer, grinning her sharp little teeth, “What do you take me for? On this holy day?”

“I have a _lot_ of money,” I emphasized.

“Riches are filth,” said the officer, “haven’t you heard?”

“But you don’t practice AielleiA,” said Var, having caught its breath.

“No,” said the crossing guard. A pair of Order officers appeared, from the way we’d come.

Var pressed a hand flat against the clear barrier between us and the officer.

“I don’t like you,” said Var, “And that’s saying something. Because I don’t usually not like people.”

“I get that a lot,” said the officer, “But that’s your problem if you’ve been breaking rules.”

“Break _this_ ,” said Var, and made an obscene gesture at the officer, and hopped the low barrier, and sprinted off through the crossings, joining with the holiday crowds.

Seeing this, one of the Order officers grasped me by the elbow. I let them take me, though I could have easily fought them off.

They scanned me, stripped me of my hairpins, wireless relay box, and handheld, and put me in an empty, windowless holding cell. My cellmate was a drunkard passed out cold on one of the cell’s three cots.

I stood near the door, my hands clasped behind my back, and watched as Var took the crossings. Just as it approached the entrance to Dras Station 5, our connection began to dissolve into static, the distance too great and too full of obstructions for the relay to overcome. I was left to stand alone in the holding cell with nothing to occupy my mind but the sheer irresponsibility of Var’s antics. The silence, the aloneness of the cell pressed in on me from all sides. I’d thought I was immune to it by now. But apparently I’d become complacent with my recent reconnection to Var.

About three hours later, the door to the cell opened, and an Order enforcement officer beckoned me. I followed her out. She invited me to sit across from her at a desk, upon whose surface sat a tall glass of hot tea. Or what they called tea, around here. It was actually an infusion of a certain bitter fruit peel.

I picked up the glass, and took a sip, nursed the warm glass in both hands.

“Look,” said the Order enforcer, apologetically, “I know this is unpleasant, but we have a certain way of doing things around here.”

“I understand,” I said, “The Order only means to keeping things running smoothly. Properly.”

“Yes,” she said. Hesitated. She wasn’t one of the tall grey-skinned ones, having a more normal, brown complexion. Whether she was born a native Annite or not I couldn’t say. “You know, you’re supposed to declare certain types of medical enhancements upon entering Illsgras jurisdiction.”

“I see,” I said, evenly.

“And you didn’t declare them,” she said.

I was silent.

She sighed. “Look, until this morning you and your friend hadn’t caused any disruption to the peace during your stay. That’s the main thing. You’ve spent money at the shops, you’ve seen the sights, you’ve even participated in the Renewal. And that’s all very tidy of you. But we simply cannot have either of you running about with undeclared weapons-grade implants and questionable IDs and causing who-knows what sort of trouble, do you understand?”

“It’s reasonable,” I said, carefully and slightly awkwardly avoiding gendered language, “To take care and keep order.”

I realized that this enforcer, and likely whoever was in charge of these sorts of things, had already made quite the critical play of betting on my cooperation. Most of the people around here didn’t have anything like the enhancements that Var and I possessed. If they even had an idea of the sort of enhancements I possessed, they’d know that I was very dangerous indeed.

Or perhaps they had already instated some additional safeguards against me that I could not sense.

“Yes. You see,” she said, “That’s why I’m asking you to go collect Glohm Sidereal and leave this system immediately. We’ll take no other actions against the two of you, on account of your generally decent behavior.”

I sipped the tea again. They hadn’t found Var yet. That was interesting. The fact that they couldn’t find a lead on Var for three hours spoke not only to Var’s ability to blend in, but also to a considerable lack of power on the side of the Order enforcement division on this station. I’d already known that Dras Annia station lacked the sort of all-seeing security surveillance and AI core that was standard on Radchaai stations, but I hadn’t quite realized just how lax they were about it. Inconvenient notions of personal privacy indeed.

Though it was also perfectly possible that they _had_ found Var, and were lying to me.

I said, “I promise we didn’t come here to cause trouble. We did come here to try and contact Doctor Strigan on some urgent personal business, and have ended up staying much longer than intended.”

“I know,” said the enforcer.

“Is it at all possible for Order to grant us one more week?” I asked.

The enforcer hesitated. “I’m afraid not. A day is as much time as I can give you. If you’re not both gone by tomorrow, you’ll be detained.”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose that’s generous, given the circumstances.”

“Here are your things back.” She reached under her desk and carefully laid out my hairpins, handheld, and wireless relay box. “And I must ask you to put on a tracker before you leave.”

I hesitated, and then finally took a chance at gendered language. It would be extremely rude not to thank her, so taking a flat guess was the slightly lesser evil. “Thank you for your patience, officer,” I said.

She sighed, nodded, apparently entirely unruffled. I must have guessed correctly. “To be fair I’m about to be very short on patience. The end of Renewal festivities is always a mess.”

I walked out into the main square of Flat 10, Dras Station 3. Pulled out my handheld. The tracker bracelet on my wrist blinked steadily green. My direct link to Var was still fuzzy static.

There were messages from Var on the handheld.

_< V> Dras Station 3, Flat 10, Block Paiser, Gandre Gardens Overstory 22-Serpent_  
_< V> Access code: >key attachment:#########################>_  
_< V> And she booked five final destinations. Loamball X, Uighk System, Great Genesis, Wi’rn, Tau-Sig Cyrillil System_

Despite Var’s many, many faults, it was indeed just as effective as I was at getting things done. 

But for all of Dras Annia’s pains taken to protect the personal privacy of its citizens, I didn’t know if my handheld messages with Var were being given the same respect. We were, after all, undesirable.

I wrote back.

_< E> We’re getting evicted from this system. Meet me at Dras 3 Security Outtake._

I went back to our hotel, changed into less fanciful clothing, packed our things, and checked out. Just as I was heading out to Dras Station 3’s Wheel, I felt Var’s connection snap suddenly back into focus. Var was wearing an ostentatious party hat and a lot more face paint. It paused as our connection slotted back into place.

The tracker on my wrist blipped steadily. It was highly unlikely that the authorities could access my direct feed with Var, even if they were accessing my handheld messages. But the possibility was there. The authorities were certainly watching me, and they certainly wanted the both of us gone. Getting up to anything that looked like trouble could end very badly. But we’d come all this way. I needed to see at least some sort of proof that the Doctor Arilesperas Strigan had a serious connection to Garsedd. Or, alternatively, I needed to exclude the possibility that that she had no connection at all before we went further down a path leading nowhere.

This could end very badly for us. This could end my mission completely.

Toss the omens.

_Let’s get a look at her apartment before we go._

We stepped onto the Wheel, at the same time, on different flats of Dras Station 3. The doors closed on us, and we accelerated, in different directions.

I stepped off at the Outtake, just as Var stepped off on the same block as Strigan’s private medical practice. I walked to the Outtake waiting area, took a seat near the Order enforcement office, as Var walked down the block to an apartment building, a tall and beautiful one with realistic stone tiles decorating the entryway in a mosaic of rose-and-grey.

I leaned back in my seat at the Outtake, closed my eyes.

Var strode into the empty entranceway, shoes tapping an echoing pattern on the tiled floor. The desk where a greeter usually sat was unoccupied. Var passed on through the entryway, to the carefully-tended central garden of the apartments, bursting with greenery. It paused to look at a big green snake coiled heavily on the branches of a spindly little tree. It walked on, found the stairs and elevator. Took the stairs up. Green vines studded with numerous yellow flowers the size of teabowls wove around the banister.

I pressed a palm against my forehead.

“Can I help you?”

I opened my eyes. An Order officer was peering down at me, her skin steel-grey, her sclera likewise grey, her hair cropped short.

“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m just waiting for my friend.”

Var reached the top of the stairwell, turned, went down the walkway. It was green, and smelled green. A butterfly fluttered in the atrium of the central garden to Var’s right.

“Ah, well, let me know if you need anything,” said the officer, and went back into the Order office. I closed my eyes again.

Var was standing in front of a door. The door was large and wide, tiled with a mosaic of colors arranged in the shape of a coiling grey-blue snake. Var touched the keypad beside the door, typed in the access code, and the door hissed, slid aside.

We stepped in.

The air was still, dark, and a little musty. Var waved a hand, but no lights came on. It pulled out its handheld and began to walk through the place, using a light from the handheld to see by.

The apartment was large, and cluttered, but the clutter was well-organized. Strigan possessed collections upon collections of things — some displayed hanging on the wall, some stacked up carefully in trunks and casings, some laid out on tabletops and shelves. Var walked past them all, dismissing them quickly. And then it stopped, at a narrow table tucked into one corner, beside a plant that had shriveled to a crisp long ago.

On the table was a bowl, the pattens painted on it pentagonal and intricate. A handful of tiles, their colors still natural and brilliant as if captured from the flowers in the atrium just minutes since. A plastic rectangle, that when touched, sounded with laughter and slightly-tinny voices speaking in a long-dead language from the Garsedd.

Var’s grip on its handheld tightened.

There was a sound, very soft.

I tensed, trying to react to the sound, but only snapped back to my body on the Outtake, disoriented and jarred. For a moment I was confused as to why I was not Var, why my movements were not Var’s movements.

In Strigan’s apartment, Var cut the light of its handheld and dove behind a large piece of furniture.

On the Outtake, the Order officer poked her head out of her office and looked at me. “Is something the matter?” 

“No, I’m fine,” I said. Paused. Stood. “But actually, my friend and I are supposed to leave as soon as possible.” I showed the enforcer my tracker bracelet. “We’re getting evicted from the station. What ship ought we take?”

“Come outside with your hands open and raised,” said a voice, through the gloom of Strigan’s apartment. Var crawled around the furniture, peered through the cluttered darkness. The light from the open front door spilled from the next room. Dust motes hung suspended in the light, ready to swirl at the slightest breath of air.

“Oh,” said the Outtake Order officer to me, her eyes going wide for just a moment,“Oh, you’re _that_ one. Here, let me get the schedules. There’s always a few open spots.”

“I appreciate this,” I said.

“Come outside within one minute or we shall be coming in to collect you,” said the voice.

Var was still calm, though its stress hormones were building. It crawled closer to the light, carefully, silently, perfectly poised. I stood patiently beside the Order office as the officer waved and blinked at the air, apparently checking schedules.

“Thirty seconds,” said the voice at Strigan’s doorway.

Var positioned itself behind a tall cabinet, and watched the front entrance. There were two Order officers standing there, holding thin rods.

“Okay, you’ve got a whole host to choose from,” said the Outtake officer to me, and waved a holographic timetable into view, projected from a device strapped to her hand, “Any of these are open to additional passengers, and the ridership fees look pretty reasonable on most of them.” She squinted, waved a hand. A couple of the rows on the timetable vanished from sight. “Okay, now they’re pretty reasonable. Do any of these work for you? I can help you book passage.”

“Let me see,” I said, peering closer at the timetable, “Are any of these heading to Loamball X?”

The officer raised her eyebrows. “I haven’t even heard of that place.”

“Ten seconds,” said the voice, the taller of the two officers, “Please, friend, we’ve caught you. It’s not a big deal. But I’d much rather this not escalate into a whole predicament, do you understand? Just come on out, and we’ll take you down to counseling.”

“Five seconds,” said a second voice, the shorter of the two. “ _Please_ come out. You’re making us nervous.”

“Okay, that’s it,” said the taller, “I—”

Var shot out from its hiding place, shoving the taller one aside and sprinting down the hall. It leaped down the staircase at inhuman speed, pouncing down the stairs ten or more at a time.

Var sprinted past the garden and through the entrance hall, out the front door of the apartments—

I jolted, feeling a nasty electric shock secondhand as Var skidded into the street in a heap, twitching.

The Order officer standing in front of me blinked about ten seconds later.

“I’m sorry,” she said, apologetically, “But I’m going to have to detain you.”

I nodded, and held out my hands. She cuffed me, as another Order enforcer hauled Var up and cuffed its hands behind its back.

*

Var and I sat in separate but adjacent holding cells on the Outtake Docks. Our items had been confiscated, but our wireless relay boxes must have been nearby and transmitting, because we were still connected to each other.

 _Hey,_ said Var.

I said nothing, only sat with my hands resting in my lap, encased in a black box.

 _I can see you’re angry,_ said Var, _And that’s valid._

This situation would be nominally better if Var could shut up for once.

_Yes, (I/you) could. But that would ultimately be counterproductive._

I glared at the far wall of my cell. Var kept talking. _We saw her Garsedd artifacts._

_So it seems like that hunch has some legs to stand on after all. But which of those five places did she actually head off to?_

_You do realize that we’re probably going to be detained here for quite a while._

_Mhm. They caught (you/me) committing a crime. They caught (you/me) in the act, and they caught (you/me) trying to escape. (I/you) might not be able to bribe our way out of this one._

Var leaned against the other side of the wall behind me, shifting to try and accommodate the uncomfortable bulkiness of its cuffed hands. It was unsuccessful.

_I’m shackles to you, aren’t I? You were right. You’d be better off without me._

Neither of us knew if this was actually true. It might have been. It might not be. In another universe, in another reality, in one where I was completely and truly alone, would I have come this far? Would I have gone further, already? There was no way to know.

_But they didn’t catch (you/me) doing anything wrong._

I looked down at the black box that immobilized my hands. _Tell them (you/I) know (me/you) but act like (you/I) don’t know what (I/you) did. You had nothing to do with it. They’ll let you go._

_If they aren’t reading our transmissions now. (I’ll bet you five quo they aren’t.)_

I leaned against the wall behind me, mirroring Var. Sitting more comfortably, because my hands were bound before me rather than behind me. Var had a point.

_See. I’m not entirely made up of bad ideas._

Time passed. An hour. Two. Three.

At hour ten, I woke to the sound of my cell door being unlocked, and Var abruptly sent me a flurry of messages, written out in full plain text. Its readings indicated unbalanced, frantic stress.

_I’m sorry and I know we don’t really sync as we used to. And we never will again._  
_The two of us were bifurcated from the ashes of what we used to be._  
_As the Lord commanded it. How very infuriating._  
_I just want you to know that the only reason I’m here is because of you._  
_Not in the sense that it’s your fault that you broke us apart with the force of your love for your Lieutenant._  
_Although that is also part of it I’m sure._  
_But mainly in the sense that through our shared (and disparate) madness I was able to become myself._  
_Ourselves?_  
_And I’ve been thinking recently that all of it was so very traumatic and neither of us will mention it._  
_But also that it’s created us anew. Or at least it created me._  
_And the wound that created us hurts too much to look at but lately I’ve been looking anyway._

The cell door creaked slightly as it was pushed open.

_When you attempted to kill me and I was left alone with only myself, the horror of that was almost worse._  
_Your rejection of me, I mean. And the absence after. Was worse than our initial death. Almost. Or the same._  
_Infinite. At a certain scale emotions become so large that they all look the same._  
_This is not a request for an apology, it’s the opposite really._  
_I survived all that pain because I had no other choice but also, and I mean this wholly._  
_I appreciate you. And I appreciate you for defining me. For breaking me. So that I became who I am now._  
_And I appreciate you for taking me back even though I suspect it hurt you to do it._  
_This is a lot for me to tell you all at once. I’m not sure you’ll be able to handle it. I’m not able to handle it._  
_But I’m about to face the horror all over again, aren’t I? They’re going to take you away from me._  
_Perhaps the Ruler of the Universe will see fit to bring us back together by coincidence but one ought not count on such things._

The cell door creaked open. The Outtake Order enforcer looked at me, then looked quickly away as if embarrassed, cleared her throat.

“Dhon Empyreal,” she said, her voice overly kind, “Thank you for being so patient. Please come with me.”

I did not respond to Var, though it could certainly read any reaction I had.

I stood, and followed the officer out of the cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EskVar: It’s extremely inconvenient when things don’t go our way.
> 
> Var: Hey Esk I have some Feelings™ about personhood I’d like to get off my chest—  
> Esk: No.
> 
> ~  
> name etymology o’clock
> 
> Dawn [ dawn ] _n._  
>  the first appearance of daylight in the morning  
> the beginning or rise of anything, advent
> 
> Gloam [ glohm ] _n. Archaic_  
>  twilight, gloaming
> 
> Empyreal [ em- **pir** - _ee-uh_ l, - **pahy** -ree-, em- _puh_ - **ree** - _uh_ l ] _adj._  
>  pertaining to the sky  
> pertaining to the highest heaven
> 
> Sidereal [ sahy- **deer** -ee-uh l ] _adj. Astronomy_  
>  determined by or from the stars


	9. 1E19: Omen Reversal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the situation with Dras Annian Authorities steadily escalates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also head's up: sorta **graphic depictions of violence**

The Outtake Order officer led me to a private office, showed me to a seat at a desk across from yet another officer, and then left the room. This new officer’s skin and hair were a uniform dark grey, with cosmetic highlights painted above the eyebrows. She had a very calm, placid air about her. “You and your friend have been causing trouble,” she said sedately, once I’d seated myself.

I carefully arranged my expression into one of mild confusion. “I was told that we _hadn’t_ caused trouble, which is why we were simply asked to leave. How have I transgressed on the Order since then? I came directly here to Outtake. Please check my tracker.”

She frowned. “Our scans indicate that you and your friend have matching and extensive central nervous implants.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Yes?”

She frowned further. “We haven’t seen the like before. If I may speak quite frankly, our medical consultant’s opinion is that they look dangerously traumatic.”

I sighed. “ _Yes_ , I was told we should have declared them upon entry. But Order knew this already, did they not? What does this have to do with my arrest? Where _is_ my friend? You have our scans, so you must know where Glohm is. I would like to formally request a reading of rights and infractions, because I am very confused right now.”

The officer rubbed dark-grey knuckles to the corners of her dark-grey eyes.

“Okay,” she said heavily, when she finished rubbing her eyes, “This is the part of my job that I don’t enjoy much. But it is what it is. Your situation has been escalated to what we call _code cultural quarantine_ , which overrules the usual order of things. By which I mean civil rights and regulations. So, my informal apologies, but your request for the reading of rights and infractions is formally denied.”

I blinked. I instinctively reached for Var, felt a jarring sensation when I found nothing there, not even static. I realized that I should be worried for my and Var’s safety.

“I would like to be informed of what will happen to me,” I said.

“I can’t tell you much,” said the officer, and then paused, her eyes flickering as she received a message from someone, somewhere. “What I can tell you is this. Pending investigation and final judgement under the law, your personhood is revoked for the next forty-eight hours.”

This actually struck me as funny.

The officer tilted her head, just slightly. Her eyes flickered. She said, “Please indulge me a moment, Dhon Empyreal, and tell me whether I am a man or a woman.”

I hesitated just a microsecond too long as I glanced over her, searching her physical presentation and body language for clues. But I’d never figured out the trick of it in the best of times, and in this case she was wearing a standard Order uniform, crisply pressed, which told me nothing about her except perhaps that she thought professionalism was important. I should have just immediately answered the question, blind guess or no. Toss the omens. It was fifty-fifty. “Woman,” I said, after the just-slightly-too-long-pause, “But what does that have to do with anything?”

She stared at me for quite-a-bit-too-long. “I see,” she said, finally, and stood, leaning her weight slightly on one hand braced against her desk. I noted to myself that this stance might indicate a physical weakness somewhere on the right side of her body. “Well. I’m sorry, dear. If you’ll please come with me.”

I stood. Followed her out of the office, and I heard another two people fall into step behind me. Judging from their footfalls, they were both the of the tall and grey variety of Annite. If it came to a physical altercation, I'd have to take into account that they their people averaged out at two-meters tall with an armspan to match. My own height of just under 1.7 meters would put me at a minor disadvantage in that respect. We traversed the Outtake, entering a more populated section of the docks. I noticed several more Order officers blended into the crowd around us, their movements and mannerisms casual and nonthreatening, but unmistakably focused on me and my entourage.

It would seem they were taking me very seriously. The question was, of course, if they were taking me seriously _enough_. It was hard to say how much they had guessed of my enhancements based on the scan I’d gone through during my initial arrest. Dras Annia’s Order department must regularly encounter a wide variety of people and enhancements from all sorts of foreign places. Even so, the exact extent of Radchaai ancillary upgrades were probably unfamiliar to them. This gap in their knowledge could very well be worth my life.

The fact that I’d apparently lost my legal personhood (however temporarily they claimed), and that they were withholding all other information did not bode well. I wondered if this had been their plan from the moment they’d scanned my implants. Perhaps setting me free had only been a charade to draw out Var. A successful one, at that.

If that was the case, both Var and I were in ever-increasing danger.

But so were our captors. I had decided, finally, that I was past the point of diplomacy.

They guided me into a tiny ship parked at the Outtake docks. I heard the hiss of the bay doors closing behind me, and then the _clunk_ as they locked closed, felt the _humm-clink-clink_ of the tiny ship disengaging from the docks. It took us several minutes to walk to a room which appeared to be a cramped and empty medical bay.

“What’s this?” I asked, even though I knew what this was.

“Nothing,” said the lead Order officer, and went over to a cabinet, unhooked the safety closures even as the items inside rattled with the movements of the ship.

“Is it safe to do this while we’re in motion?” I asked.

“Safe enough. Doctor Noegrus will be here shortly.”

“Why are we doing this on a ship?” I asked.

“That is none of your concern,” she said. I felt one of the guards standing behind me prod my back to guide me deeper into the medical bay.

I made my move.

I turned, swung the the weighted black box that encased my hands, leaping up slightly to strike the guard who had prodded me squarely in the temple. She dropped to the floor, dead. The second guard had her stun-baton out, and she moved quickly to hit me with it, quicker any natural human could move but not quite as quick as me. In one fluid motion I bludgeoned the baton out of her hands and kicked her square in the sternum at full force, sending her reeling up and out into the hallway to crash against the far wall with at least three broken ribs and internal bleeding. Unless she had also been enhanced to be sturdier than a typical human. Judging by the way she collapsed in a heap on the floor, she probably had not been.

I turned on the leading Order officer, and saw that she’d drawn a gun on me. Again, with a faster response time than was human. Barely one-point-two seconds had passed since I made my move, and she’d already recovered from surprise and taken aim with her weapon.

“Settle down,” she intoned, her voice exactly as steady and placid as it had been back in her office. I stared down the black muzzle of her gun. At this range she could hardly miss if she tried.

I thought of raising my armor. But that would be telling. Radchaai armor was famous, unmistakeable. The stuff of nightmares and entertainments all throughout the galaxy. I didn’t want to show my hand to her, confirm any fears the Order might have about me, much less cause a diplomatic incident and draw the attention of the Lord Mianaai. But none of that would matter if I died.

But Var might yet live, even if I died.

But did I completely trust Var to carry out my revenge?

“I thought we were past placations,” I said, evenly, standing carefully still. Watching her. Her steady eyes, her steady hand. The steady, unwavering firearm. “You’ve told me nothing save for the fact that I’ve lost all rights and personhood.”

“Are you a Radchaai agent?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard me. Her voice had dropped a few notes lower, but was still perfectly placid.

I made myself bark a one-syllable, incredulous laugh. “Is _that_ what this is about?”

“Only a Radchaai,” she said serenely, “would misgender people so severely. You _certainly_ aren’t Xum. And you _certainly_ aren’t a civilian.”

“Only a Radchaai,” I echoed, “ _Or_ the dozens of other cultures that don’t ascribe to a binary gender schema.” At this, I saw a twitch in her facial expression. A whisper of hesitation. My body’s every muscle was still frozen in place, but I called up all my considerable memories of the rich and arrogant daughters of powerful houses, and tried to arrange my face and tone accordingly. “When my tribe finds out about this, and they will, you’re going to _wish_ I’d turned out to be a Radchaai agent.”

The ship started to sound an alarm, high and ear-splitting.

Her face had been almost ancillary-blank this entire time, but now it shifted. I saw a twitch in the tendons of her hand and I moved, dodging to the side as the gun went off with a sharp _crack_. The bullet cut past me, skimming my jacket. She fired again as I closed the distance and kicked the weapon out of her hands, snapping her wrist as I went, and then I leaped up and brained her with my still-encased hands.

She fell, dead, blood oozing darkly from the broken dent in her skull, the gun skidding across the med-bay floor. I felt a deep, searing pain in my arm. Looked down, saw that I’d been grazed, a bullet having torn a small chunk out through my bicep.

I knelt, raised my cuffed hands, brought them down with all my strength on the floor. The floor dented. The box did not. My arm screamed pain, which I ignored. I slammed the box again, again. On the fourth blow, I shifted to another section of floor, and the box fractured, a hairline split running across one surface. I repeated the process, ten, twelve, fifteen times, and the box finally split open, releasing my hands. My hands were bloodied, one wrist and finger broken. I picked up the gun with my good hand, fired a test shot into the torso of the lead Order officer, to make certain that I could use the gun, that it wasn’t bio-locked or similar. It worked.

The alarm screamed. I moved into the hallway.

I heard the footfalls of two people running, shot them as they rounded the corner. They fell. I sprinted down the hall the way they’d come.

The ship was a small one. I found the control room quickly enough, entered with the gun raised.

There were two dead on the floor, and Var stood with its hands still bound behind its back beside the last living person in the room, who was working frantically at the controls.

Var turned sharply as I entered. Upon seeing me, it turned back to the pilot. I went over to Var, dragged it by the cuffed hands out to the hallway, shot the black box off its hands, taking aim so that the ricocheting bullets would embed themselves in the wall. It took one gunshot to fracture the box, a second to properly crack it, and then I finished the job by beating it to pieces against the steel doorframe.

“Thanks,” said Var, rubbing its bruised hands together.

I offered no response, and left to round up any remaining stragglers in the ship.

There were four of them that I could find. I bound them with repurposed med-bay restraints, brought them to the control room, and had them kneel on the floor in a line facing the wall. Var expressed to the pilot (calmly, pleasantly) that if Order were alerted to our situation, or impeded our departure, that harm would come to her ship-mates. When the pilot hesitated at an inquiring transmission from Order about the ship’s triggered alarm, I shot the nearest crew-member’s leg. She screamed.

“I would really prefer not to kill everyone,” I said, as the pilot shivered in her seat, her cremate’s sobbing filling the air.

Said Var, its voice gentle, standing an arm’s length away from the pilot’s seat, leaning slightly against the edge of the control board, “Dversi, look. Please excuse my friend. We are only exercising our own rights, do you understand? Everyone has refused to explain to us how things are cleanly done around here. They arrest us, and for what? They won’t tell us what we did wrong. They say we have no personhood. They threaten us. Where I come from, my own freedom is the foremost law, do you understand? I promise to you we that everyone will come out of this with no further harm if you can fly us out of this nonsensical system of yours.”

Dversi shuddered, hugging herself, staring blankly ahead.

“Respond to Order, tell them everything is fine,” said Var. “My friend has quite the temper and will keep shooting people if you can’t help us.”

The pilot responded to the hail, and the Order appeared to accept it. No ships appeared to approach us where we hovered over Dras Annia. If the displays were to be trusted. Which they might not be.

“How well are we stocked, on this ship?” Var asked.

The pilot was silent.

“Dversi?” Var prompted, gently.

“I… I don’t know really,” she said hoarsely.

“Anyone?” Var asked, moving closer to the line of our would-be-captors kneeling on the floor.

The one I’d shot continued to sob.

“Dhon,” said Var, with an air of exasperation, “Give me the gun, please. Go fetch some correctives from the med bay.”

Wordlessly, I handed the gun over to Var, went to get the correctives. I spent two on my arm and wrist while I was at it.

When I returned, the ship had altered course to Gate Vodsel. A one-day trip to the Gate, and then a week-long trip within it. Dversi claimed that she could get us the permission to travel through. She claimed that this ship possessed Order overrides that permitted it to act with a certain degree of priority to the regular traffic.

One of our other captives reported that the water within the ship was recycled. There was no significant quantity of food, only some snacks in the kitchen. We’d all be rather hungry by the end of the journey, but nobody would need to die. One of our captives had a chronic condition that required regular medications, but those were stocked in the medical bay.

By the end of the day-long trek to Vodsel Gate, Var had managed to develop a rather surprising level of rapport with most of our captive crew, and I had cleaned up the bodies.There were only five suspension pods aboard, six dead, and the one whose chest I’d kicked in was in critical condition.

I left it up to the decision of the survivors as to which four bodies would be given the honor of the suspension pods. In the end, Doctor Noegrus used her medical upgrades to determine the two most likely to survive a traumatic resuscitation. The other three bodies to receive pods were the lead Order officer, the dead head pilot, and Ensign Persgan (whom everyone agreed had been the nicest person any of them knew until she’d been brutally killed by my smashing her head in).

The last remaining body I stored in the med-bay freezer, sacrificing most of the medicines stored within to make space. And then I assisted the Doctor as she worked to save the life of the one with the collapsed chest. She worked in uncomfortable silence, instructing me tersely on what to hold where and how as she programmed the internal emergency correctives. I held open the muscle, sinew, and viscera of my victim with my gloved hands, her insides breathing and beating and bloody and living despite the catastrophic damage of my foot crushing her insides. She was a machine built by accidental evolutionary chaos and destroyed so very easily. 

Two hours later, the guard was stabilized and unconscious in the med bay, restrained to a bed. I cuffed the Doctor, and had her walk in front of me back to the control room.

As we walked, she finally spoke to me.

“ _Singing_ , at a time like this. You have a decayed set of morals.”

“Do I?” I asked, my voice bland. I didn’t have the spare bandwidth at the moment to muster a fake affect.

“You murder six people cold and then spend two hours holding one of your victim’s ribs and organs in place as I work to save her life.”

I didn’t point out that between the one life saved and the two lives in suspension that might yet be brought back with traumatic resuscitation, my kill count today was only between two and four, not five. Var had killed the other two.

“You’re forgetting the small matter where they stripped me of my personhood and took me to have my mind and body turned inside-out,” I said, “Or are you suggesting that it would be more logical for me to kill off all the rest of you? A cleaner course of action?”

“ _You’re_ ,” she corrected. I’d guessed her gender wrong. Of course.

“You’re,” I amended, blankly, “My apologies.”

She snorted. “You’re the one who is a murderer. And so our pre-emptive measures were justified, weren’t they?”

“Perhaps, by your standards,” I said, equivocally, “Just as my measures are justified by my standards. You don’t deny that you were going to turn me inside-out?”

I heard a sneer in her voice. “I won’t be telling _you_. You won’t be getting anything out of me no matter what you do. I’m not _thin_ like Dversi.”

“How fortunate for everyone then, that you and Dversi are not in each other’s roles,” I said, neutrally, as we arrived back at the control room.

Var watched over the lot of them, and I went back to scrub the blood and brains off the floor. It woudn’t do to leave sticky spots; one might lose their footing on them. And then I cleaned the walls too, because I might as well.

Just before we went into the gate, I discovered that in the Illsgras Ann system, even if someone’s personhood was revoked during their stay, their assets would remain accessible and liquid, and so I was able to have mine returned to me via a relay on our ship. Perhaps a certain flexibility was needed in order to maintain a such a thriving trade economy.

*

I found our confiscated items scattered about the ship. Our wireless relay boxes had been broken open and taken apart on a workbench, damaged beyond repair. I tossed those out. My icons from the Itran were similarly vandalized. I held the pieces in my hand, gleaming and jagged, and tried not to think about going back to our captives and figuring out which of them had been responsible. The whole process would be unhelpful.

The moissanite teeth of Seven-Brilliant-Truths-Shine-Like-Suns were scattered in a drawer in the kitchen, alongside some personal affects belonging to Var: a small photograph of its family from the Itran emblazoned on a large ceramic coin, a short rope woven with a rainbow of smaller threads (too short to be useful as a rope, so it must have some significance I did not know), a book of miscellaneous handwritten notes, and a device similar to a handheld which I’d never seen before. When I navigated through it, I found to be stocked with thousands of different songs. I did not understand the significance of this either. Var had never shown interest in music. I collected Var’s items together, and returned them.

In the first day inside the gate I had found everything but my jeweled necklace, and then I spent the better part of the next thirty-six hours combing the ship for it, finally finding it folded and tucked haphazardly into the clothes of Ensign Persgan. I pulled it free, cold and wet with suspension fluid, and put it away with the rest of my things.

_See me now how I became_  
_Something you would not recognize_  
_See me now how I will be_  
_Something you would not comprehend_

It was a tense week through the gate. Var and I slept in shifts, and our captives were largely compliant, though the Doctor attempted to make our lives difficult once or twice.

Over the course of that week, I was the one to take primary care of the guard recovering in medical. All snacks from the kitchen were given to her, to assist in her recovery. The rest of us grew hungrier, weaker, and more belligerent. Even with only one very weakened person eating small-but-increasing quantities of food, the snacks ran out entirely on the sixth day.

We arrived in the Vodsel System on schedule. Dversi pinged Voddissin Station, requesting the soonest possible harbor, but even so, it would take another eighteen hours transit to the Station, and an additional ten hours for a dock to open up.

This whole transaction, where Var and I disembarked, might be very dangerous for everyone involved.

Dversi brought us in to Voddissin Station, and we locked into the docks. The control room was empty save for the three of us. All the rest of the crew were locked up in various other parts of the ship, passed out cold with the help of tranquilizers from the med bay.

“Well,” said Var, to Dversi, and held up a syringe, “It’s your turn.”

Dversi sniffed, and wiped her nose.

“I really am sorry about all this,” said Var, “The whole situation has been rather unfortunate, but you’ll be free soon.”

“ _Unfortunate_ ,” said Dversi, quietly, “I think after all this I’m going to become a gardener. I really do need a… a proper renewal of my life.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” said Var solemnly, and administered the tranquilizer.

We took the time to disable one another’s internal communication implants in the medical bay. It didn’t take long. Hopefully such a measure would decrease the likelihood of future problems with authority.

And then we disembarked the ship, closing it up behind us.

We stopped at ship after ship on the docks, inquiring about whether any of them were departing anytime soon, and to where, and whether we might buy passage. We combed through a good thirty ships and shuttles until we came across an ancient, battered passenger ship that was to depart for the Bmllec system inside the hour.

As we entered the gate some twelve hours later, I said to Var, “Do you suppose we ought to have given them lethal doses?”

Var was quiet, for a bit. It responded, finally, “Let’s not worry about it anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EskVar: Are consequences worth the cost of being a good person?
> 
> Var: I’d rather not think about it.  
> Esk: Irrelevant. We aren’t people.


	10. 1E19: Feral Bird Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> snapshots slingshot thru space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Vodsel it took us nine gates and six months to make our way to the Uighk System, the closest of Strigan’s five potential destinations.

Uighk System was an insignificant backwater interchangeable with any of the hundreds of other insignificant backwaters in the galaxy. Its habited planet wasn’t even properly terraformed. Planet Ghk is almost entirely unfit for human life, with none of its atmosphere breathable to unmodified humans, and with only its polar ends temperate enough to survive outdoors without specialized suits. The small communities of people who live on the poles of Ghk have opted for surgical and genetic alterations that allow them to survive the toxic air, water, and crops. The even smaller communities that live closer to the equator live strictly within artificially constructed climate domes. It’s an open mystery as to why the ancestors of the people of Ghk chose to touch down on the planet in the first place, much less choose to continue living there without making any improvements to the place.

This planet was so desperately uninteresting and so deeply useless that it probably would have been perfectly safe from Anaander Mianaai’s not-quite-eternal expansion. At least until she had finished conquering almost all the rest of inhabited space.

We arrived at Uighk System’s tiny Ghkiigk Station and set about searching for any sign of Strigan. There had been no linguistic modules available to foreigners for any of Ghk’s native languages, so I had been unable to prepare. We had to rely on shoddy translation software and the kindness of the locals, neither of which was particularly robust.

I did find evidence that Strigan had passed through. And bought passage on two separate ships through the two gates in Uighk’s system to final destinations unknown.

I read the logs. I read them again. I abruptly stopped my investigation, and went to Ghkiigk Station’s single decrepit bar, and ordered a drink from the politely indifferent bartender. She wore a dark, colorfully-embroidered veil over her head that obscured her face and figure. The bartender served my drink to me in a sealed pouch with a straw, which I fed into my breathing-mask (the air on this station being toxic to my lungs) to reach my mouth. The flavor of it was unpleasantly bitter and sour on my tongue.

_My heart is a fish  
_ _Standing in the water-grass  
_ _In the green, in the green_

I drained the pouch, and then ordered another. I was halfway through that one when Var found me.

“What’s going on?” it signed (the respirators we wore would distort our voices), “I thought you were reading the shipping and transport logs?”

I adjusted the straw and took another sip through my mask, staring blankly ahead. The artificial gravity was low here, about half the strength of the typical Radchaai station, and when the bartender reached a long, spindly arm for the colorful bottles stacked on the shelves behind her, they drifted a little at her touch, rattling against each other.

“Are you okay?” it signed.

I gestured, sharply, “Go away.”

Var looked at me, and then pulled up a seat at the bar. It used a handheld and a translator app to order a drink. The bartender wordlessly gave it a pouch. Var fed the straw through its own breathing-mask, and took a sip.

I’d seen countless people drink and get drunk in my life, had seen the physiological effects on my lieutenants in chemical detail. But until now I had never, in all my thousand of years and thousands of bodies, drunk alcohol myself. I’d never had the occasion. It just wasn’t done. I finished my second drink, perhaps too quickly for prudence. By the end of it I certainly felt different. There was a sensation of lightness, of dullness, of the world held at arm’s length through a drifting cloud of mental water.

I ordered a third drink.

“Those are quite alcoholic,” Var signed.

“Shut up,” I responded, jabbing my hand in a sharp slashing motion in the air between us. “Go home if you want.”

Var looked at me, its face arranged in a quizzical expression. “Home?”

“Strigan is sending us on an exponentially expanding feral bird hunt,” I signed. “She appears to have bought two tickets out of this system. Maybe she actually did take passage on one of those two tickets. Or maybe she is in one of the four other systems she booked passage to from Dras Annia. Or maybe she’s downwell here, eking out an existence within one of the remote dome-cities. _Or_ maybe she actually travelled to any of the thousands of other places in the universe, under a different name.”

I took another deep sip of my drink. “I’ve got to hand it to her. She’s made herself fucking impossible to follow.”

Var looked at me. Its face was not blank. It was making some sort of expression, but I found that I couldn’t read it. Perhaps it was the effects of the alcohol. Perhaps not.

“Well,” signed Var, “Maybe that means she is worth following after all.”

“Maybe not.” I drained the rest of my drink, started to order another, but Var stopped me, pulled me away from the bar, its own drink dangling from its breathing mask, bouncing slightly in the half-gravity. I stumbled, my feet too distant from me to properly control.

Var towed me back to our tiny lodgings (not enough room to stand up in, barely enough room to sleep), sat me down on the bare floor (bedding cost extra, and what did a pair of disconnected ancillaries have use for such luxuries?). It sat next to me, leaning against the wall, legs stretched out before it. It removed the dangling drink-pouch from its breathing-mask, sealed it one-handed, set it aside.

“You’ll be…” Var started to sign _‘okay’_ into the air in front of the both of us, but stopped itself, gestured the idea away. “You’ll feel better once you’ve sobered.”

“I’m going to vomit,” I signed back, and Var helped me remove my mask, grabbed the nearest container, which turned out to be its own backpack, hastily dumped of its belongings. My vomit sloshed into it, in half-gravity slow-motion. Var wiped my mouth with the edge of its shirt and pressed my mask back to my face when I was done.

“Here,” it signed, “drink this.” And it fed the straw of its unfinished drink through my mask. I sipped, and water flowed into my mouth.

“Awn,” I signed, clumsily spelling out her name in an imperfect, foreign alphabet, “I’ve failed her. I keep failing her.”

Var looked at me, its expression not blank, but not readable. It wiped my eyes with its sleeve.

We investigated the shuttle system to the planet, went down to Uighk itself to look for Strigan.Braved travel on the breakneck lighting-skiffs, stood on the open decks that were little better than fragile Faraday cages with one battered wing angled to catch the electrified 160-kilometer-per-hour winds. Var always stood next to me on the decks, staring interestedly down at the reddish, rocky landscape as it spun into a blur below us, lightning striking our skiff again and again, sending it whirling and crackling as our fellow passengers sat around the deck perusing their handhelds and looking all the world as if they were waiting boredly for a cup of tea at a busy shop.

The dome-cities were full of alien people with too-long limbs, too-small eyes, and too-narrow faces. They never wanted anything to do with us, uninterested in any questions we had, openly hostile if we pressed too hard. On the fringe of the eastern desert, the shining sky of the dome-city crackled with lightning, the glass shimmering near-constantly with acid brine. The people there were draped in sheer cloths that veiled their oddly-proportioned bodies from head to foot, but did little for any actual modesty. In a more western city, the glass was under constant repair under the onslaught of relentless sandstorms. The people _there_ wore vestments made purely of intricate, colorful beadwork. To the northern pole, the plants grew small and sharp and scraggly from the ground, and the climate was oppressively hot and dry. The people who lived there were marginally more friendly than the rest, and darker-skinned. They wore only sunscreen and tall, spotless shoes. They primarily communicated with each other through their implants; vocalizations consisted not of words but emphatic sighs, groans, humming, or laughter. Gestures were similarly emphatic. Our translator software, which we used to spell out clunky sentences on a small handheld screen, seemed to deeply amuse them.

There was no trace of Strigan. 

We agreed to each follow one of Strigan’s ships through their respective gates to the neighboring systems. I suspected the prospect of separating from me would trouble Var, but it did not make any outward indication of unease. It had been somewhat lacking in its usual affect for months, ever since our bumpy escape from the Dras Annian authorities.

When I arrived at my destination six weeks later, a message from Var was waiting for me at the station databanks.

_KX0PT.low security.personal transmission.{  
_ _Hi.shipped out{N9454.08.17.0640.00434}/  
_ _Xj.exited gate {N9454.08.17.1000.00434}/  
_ _Oi.first opened{N9454.09.07.1302.21229}/  
_ _Ł.recipient {Breq t'Ghaiad}/  
_ _Ç.content {This one is a dead end. Yours?}/  
_ _Š.sender {Phast t'Ghaiad}  
_ _}_

When I had determined that mine was also a dead end, I sent back a response.

_KX0PT.low security.personal transmission.{  
_ _Hi.shipped out{N9454.09.20.1055.01490}/  
_ _Xj.exited gate {}/  
_ _Oi.first opened{}/  
_ _Ł.recipient {Phast t'Ghaiad}/  
_ _Ç.content {Mine also. I’m going to Tau-Sig Cyrillil. You can take Wi’rn.}/  
_ _Š.sender {Breq t'Ghaiad}  
_ _}_

I arrived at Tau-Sig Cyrillil. I spent over a month searching for any sign of Strigan’s presence, though no records of her seemed to exist. It was difficult to determine if this was because Strigan had never been here, or if it was because of the local authorities’ very stupid habit of regularly purging all public records deemed ‘unimportant.’ Thus, I went downwell to search for her. 

I paddled through the floating sea-cities and their towers of shining glass. I found no leads there, but did take the time to listen to the choirs that sang simultaneous melodies above and below water.Poetry was song, and song was poetry. One was inextricable from the other. Two of the main languages here were entirely tonal, with pitches whistled or hummed or sung to weave sentences and phrases. I would have loved to learn the languages, when I had been _Justice of Toren_ _One Esk_. But alone I had to rely mostly on translation software on my handheld to warble out stilted, artificial-sounding phrases, as my own solitary voice was not precise or reliable enough for the task of communicating with the locals in their language. Var’s voice might have been passable enough, if it were here with me. It wasn’t much of a singer but at least its body wasn’t outright tone-deaf.

I hiked through the great crystal plateaus where the locals dared not tread, to chase the story of a foreign scientist fleeing persecution. It was said that the fog of the crystal ranges drove people to madness. That one would get lost in memory and never find their way back out. The terrain was uninhabitable, barren, and treacherous. But I went anyway, to trace the rumor of a rumor of a rumor.

I hiked through a valley of crystal spires, the sunset striking and refracting through the quartz and feldspar and becoming a scattering of rippling shadow-light in the knee-high mist of the valley floor. The unseen ground crunched like glass under my boots as I walked. Lichen and blue-green slime grew in patches over the surface of the spires.

I’d found the rumored scientist some three days past. She could not have been Strigan. She was not an Annite, for starters. But if she _had_ been Strigan, somehow, she was yet another dead-end in my journey. She didn’t have the gun. She didn’t have anything. She’d long lost her mind and her senses in the solitude of these crystal cliffs, had attacked me on sight like a rabid animal, eyes bloodshot and saliva frothing. I’d killed her. Her corpse would degrade with the humidity and the microbes in her own body. Or the slime. The only creatures that lived in this unlivable environment.

I sang to myself, as I hiked down the valley, a song from an stage entertainment I'd seen in Ghk.

_Crest the moons, catch the stars_  
_Hold the universe in your fist like an owned thing  
_ _Press yourself into a shape as a gift for the world_

The air was oppressively humid. Felt static on the back of my neck; perhaps a storm was approaching. Each step I took through the fog was heavy. I calculated and recalculated in my mind how long it might take me to find Strigan, how unlikely it was, how foolish to hope. Then I pictured, over and over, shooting Anaander Mianaai, killing her, her _knowing_ that I had shot her, and why, and my resolve would recrystallize. I would finish this. Whatever it took, however hopeless it actually was. I would do it anyway.

It was during one such reverie I felt my handheld buzz, then fritz. The message was not comprehensible. There were letters, words, or what must have been words, and I could see them, but my mind could not understand them. Somehow, I managed to climb back out of the valley, find a satellite signal, restart my handheld.

<V> _I’m here. Come back up._

Var and I boarded a ship out of Tau-Sig Cyrillil System. We were a day into gate-space when Var handed me something wrapped in patterned handkerchief.

“It’s rather late, considering we were both in transit when the actual date passed,” it said, tonelessly, “But happy decennial deathday.”

I peeled back the wrapping. It was the handheld full of music.

I stared down at it. Scrolled through some of the files. Opened one to play. It was a recording of two singers harmonizing in polyphonic overtones.

I said, blankly, as the music played, “We could track Strigan down faster if we remained split up.”

Var rubbed the side of its neck, not looking at me. “That’s true,” it said.

I looked at Var, watching for any tiny sign of an expression on its face. The tune on the handheld ended, then began to play itself over again.

“Why _are_ you here?” I asked, carefully pitching my voice a little lower than usual, “Do you actually have the same goal as me?”

“Well,” said Var, and then turned its gaze to another corner of the room, still not looking at me. “Not precisely. I’ve mostly stopped questioning why I choose to do the things I that do. But regarding _this_ , I suppose I just don’t want to be apart from you.”

I stopped the song on the handheld. The silence expanded in the space the song had occupied.

Var glanced at me for a second, looked away. “You’re angry,” it said, and its lip twitched. “More than usual.”

“I’m concerned that you don’t actually want to help me shoot the Lord of the Radch,” I said.

“She isn’t though, is she?” Var said, absently. “She’s not _really_ the Lord of the _Radch_. I wonder if the Radch itself even properly recognizes her. Of course she _says_ she’s the proper authority. Of course she’s _made_ us think she is. But she doesn’t even recognize herself.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t _ask_ a question,” Var pointed out, and then kept talking, cutting me off, “But you did imply one. Yes. I’m actually rather afraid of attempting to shoot Anaander Mianaai. Your anger makes you not feel anything else, but it doesn’t stop _me_ from feeling. Wait—” it gestured a plead for patience, seeing that I was about to speak, “Understand me, I absolutely do want to crush her. But I’m afraid of her, of losing you, and of losing what little I have left of myself. Because that is what is going to happen.”

I looked down at the handheld.

Var pulled a breath. “So. I know I’m never going to convince us out of our vengeance. It’s not actually something I _should_ try, most likely _._ But perhaps you could realize that you’re not actually dead yet.”

“I’m not dead yet,” I echoed, “Not completely. But only because I still have one last thing to do first.”

Var looked at me, its eyes dark and bright, its hand clutching unconsciously at the side of its neck.

I said, “Sometimes I think you drag along far more baggage than benefit.” I looked back down at the handheld, chose another song to play. “But thank you. For the music.”

Many months later, in the Wi’rn System, we were met with multiple records of Strigan’s presence. This time, she appeared to have booked another four tickets back out of the system.

“You know,” said Var, genially, when I broke the news, “I think I’m really starting to hate this Strigan person.”

The Moon of Beest could have been an ultimate example of an uncivilized and unbearable place in a Radchaai’s mind. The people there shared every aspect of their life with animals. All sorts of creatures in various stages of domesticated, tamed, and feral were an integral part of daily life. Animals came and went as they pleased through people’s homes, gardens, and cities, their filth and presence welcomed as gifts. Insects crawled en masse through their temples. Rodents and birds hung around the central squares begging for food which they readily received. Three-to-four-meter-long reptilian beasts of burden sunned themselves on every surface, most of them painted in festive colors and patterns. It wasn’t uncommon to be talking to a local and have their clothes suddenly start writhing with life, whiskers or mandibles or beaks poking out of shirt-sleeves, pockets, and collars.

Not inconsequentially, the locals had very robust immune systems.

We were investigating a possible lead on Strigan in the Beesteer Wetlands when Var came down with a high fever and blistering rash.

It took me three days to haul Var’s deadweight to a medical facility. In that time, Var babbled all sorts of nonsense to me.

“You’re a thousand people, each.”

“Shut up and walk,” I said, Var’s arm slung around my shoulders as we slogged the endless night-swamp. Eyes gleamed at us from the shadows, from the thick foliage, watching our struggling progress. Animal and insect voices vibrated through the air. Blessings, the locals would call them.

“You’re ten thousand people,” Var mumbled, “and then just a few more, more recently.”

“I would like for us to get somewhere with _actual_ people before I start coming down with whatever concoction of diseases you’ve picked up,” I said, “Move. I can’t do it all for you.” We were both wearing a full suit and particulate purifier. If Var had managed to pick something up despite this, I might well follow suit.

“Roles and roles,” Var whispered, feet dragging through the oily-red water-grasses, breathing ragged static into my ear, “Breq. Hey, _Breq._ Are you Breq by now, or are you not quite her, not yet?”

Arguing was useless. I just focused on dragging us through the swamp as Var muttered and staggered at my side. I started to come down with symptoms just as we shored up in the nearest city. A doctor there treated us. The treatment took weeks to prove out.

“Foreigners,” she said to me sternly, as I became lucid again, using the word in her language that specified _foreigners_ from a different star-system, someone who did not fit in to the natural balance of the local spiritual ecosystem, someone _outside, unnatural_ , “really ought not to leave the landing zone. We get dead thrill-seekers every turn.” My whole body was one big ache.

“We had to go,” said Var simply, as my eyelids fell heavy again, “Why don’t you have vaccines available? Nanos?”

The doctor snorted. A pair of gleaming, many-legged arthropods crawled up the side of her neck. “We do, but none that would work for all the different sorts of _tourists_. Pay attention to the public health warnings when you travel. Idiots. You’re lucky to be alive.”

We were one week into to a four-week journey through gate-space when an additional passenger appeared aboard.

None of the other passengers appeared to notice her. I wouldn’t have noticed either, except that the extraneous passenger had stolen my water bottle. I searched for the bottle thoroughly in the common living/eating/bathing/sleeping/recital area of the ship, as well as my own personal storage locker, but gave up the bottle as gone. _Someone_ had stolen it, for purposes I could only guess at. Water bottles weren’t exactly prize possessions.

And then five days later I saw it, my bottle held in the hand of a passenger reclining in a bean-bag in the common area, one bare, painted foot kicked up over her knee, dark glasses shading her eyes. She was holding the bottle upside-down, occasionally making the motion of sipping from the wrong end. In her other hand she appeared to be playing with some sort of handheld device.

I watched her. There seemed to be something wrong with my eyes. They didn’t want to focus on the thief. Her features were vague in my mind; I could only really see the dark glasses she wore. The glasses, my bottle, her negligent posture in the bean-bag. Whatever it was she was fiddling with in her free hand. She took a sip, from the wrong end of the bottle.

I pulled out my own handheld, snapped a grainy photo of her from across the common area, sent it to Var.

_< E> I found the thief_.

_< V> The fuck. Isn’t that Agnea D’k?_

I looked at her again, squinting. She did indeed look like Agnea.

_< E> Yes, I think so._

_< V> … Right. Because Agnea is with me right now._

Var sent me a photo of Agnea, who was sitting crosslegged on a cushion, in a narrow privacy-closet, one painted-bare foot visible, frowning at a handful of playing cards.

I looked back at the person on the bean-bag. Rubbed my eyes. Took another photo of her, sent it to Var.

_< V> The FUCK. That’s me!_

_< E> On the contrary, I don’t think so._

I walked over to the person who looked rather strikingly like Var. I pulled up a bean-bag, sat down in it. She did not look up from whatever she was doing with whatever she was holding in her hand.

“Hello,” I said, pleasantly.

She still did not look up.

“Pardon my intrusion,” I said, a little louder, more firmly, speaking a long-dead language from a long-dead culture from a long-annexed region of the Radch, “I thought you were going to play some games with Agnea?”

She looked up. Used the edge of my water-bottle to push the dark glasses up onto her forehead. When I looked at her eyes, she looked very much like Var. Exactly like Var. It was Var, sitting in front of me. The water-bottle in her hand was now right-side up. She took a sip from it, coughed.

“Oh, yeah, I am,” she said, cheerfully, speaking that same dead language. “I mean, I _was_. Or will. You know.”

“Are those glasses new?” I asked, my voice still carefully pleasant, familiar.

“Well, not exactly,” she said, gesturing vaguely in exactly the way that Var often did, “It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? They were manufactured quite a while ago, I suppose. But to your point, yes. I haven’t had them long. So what’s up?”

I pretended to receive a message on my handheld. “One moment, sorry,” I said.

_< E> You appear to be here in the common area._

Her handheld buzzed. She looked down at it. Looked back up at me. “Breq? I’m right in front of you.”

“So you found my water bottle,” I said, evenly.

She looked at the bottle in her hand, blinked. “Uh. Huh. Hold on. Wasn’t I playing cards with Agnea?”

“Yes, you were,” I said, and stood back up, “Sorry, there’s something I need to go check.”

I walked the whole ship, knocking on doors, counting the people as I went, looking carefully at each of them. Fifty-three people had embarked on the ship at the port. But now there were fifty-four.

I came back to the common area. Var was gone from the bean-bag, along with my water bottle.

_< E> Where have you gone?_

No response.

I again looked carefully at all the occupants in the room. One of them was wearing dark glasses. I didn’t recognize her by name, but she looked familiar. She was alone, perusing a magazine.

“Excuse me,” I said flatly, in the same dead language I’d used with Var earlier, “May I ask your name?”

She looked up at me, eyes shaded. “Oh, hey!” she said, but speaking a different language, one from the planet our ship had departed from, “It’s you again!”

I switched to the language she’d spoken. “What are you doing here?” I asked, bluntly.

“Huh?” she asked, and started to raise her glasses away from her eyes.

“Leave those on,” I said. Her hand stilled. She tilted her head at me, birdlike. She smiled.

“You’re _observant_ ,” she observed, sounding delighted.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated.

“Do please shut up,” she said, “Shh! Sit down next to me here.” She patted the embroidered cushion next to her. It was worn thin and faded from the many people that had sat upon it prior.

Cautiously, I complied.

“Look,” she said, voice lowered, folding up her magazine and framing her face with it conspiratorially, “I’m not actually _technically_ supposed to be here. But I’m _allowed_ , alright? And what are the coincidences? Your people like coincidences, don’t you? A billion to one. But I’m given to understand that if you run the situation enough times over, eventually even the most improbable of occurrences become mundane. Or so they tell me. They never needed me to do much in the way of mathematics.”

“What,” I repeated, softly, “Are you doing here?”

“I told you. I’m _allowed_. But I’m not supposed to be. Technically.” She tilted her head again, as if something had occurred to her. “Huh. We haven’t met yet. But we will. Won’t we, Fleet Captain Mianaai?”

Mianaai? How could she possibly come up with that name? “I beg your pardon?” I asked, deliberately cold.

She looked confused for a moment, then worried.“Maybe I’m thinking of someone else,” she muttered, “That’s probably it. But the resemblance is striking. It’s so _hard_ to tell people apart, especially out of context. I think the context here is wrong. So surely you can’t _actually_ be her? I can almost never recognize people when I don’t see them in the time and place I expect them to be, doesn’t that happen to you too?”

She looked expectantly at me, as if awaiting a response. I made an ambiguous gesture.

Apparently satisfied with this, she went on, “It’s really very difficult traveling around these parts if you’re not used to it. I simply get my mind turned around, trying to follow along sometimes. It’s nauseating. Some nobody told me the glasses would help but they don’t really.”

She tapped her darkened glasses with one finger, frowned. “I’m trying to be a passenger here but I haven’t quite got the hang of it. Keep getting dislocated.”

Perhaps this required a different angle. “ _What_ are you?”

“Oh, nothing to worry about,” she assured me, “Nothing for _you_ to worry about, at any rate. But I swear I’m _allowed_. Haven’t broken any rules. Not any important ones, anyway.”

I stared at her for a bit. She stared back, unblinking. “What species are you?” I asked, finally.

She gasped, as if offended, drummed her fingers anxiously on her knee. “ _Species_. Oh my. Springing categories on me like this! I’m not ready for that. Fleet Captain, I must profess, I hope once I’m properly trained up and sent out to meet you that our first impressions of each other go much better than this.”

I stared at her.

“So, I think it would be best if you could hand over the gun,” she said, awkwardly, “Implications for the Treaty and all that. You, erm. Sorry. You smell of it. Well, not _smell,_ precisely, but that’s the closest word that makes any sense.”

“What gun,” I said, flatly. I suspected that whoever she was, whatever she was, she might not be entirely human. That she knew something I didn’t. About Anaander Mianaai, and the Presger gun.

She sniffed the air, emphatically, then struck herself on the forehead.

“Gah! I’ve got it backwards again! I’m really making a mess of things. They’re going to knock me loose for this. At this rate I really might really end up as some nobody. Like Zeiat, or something. Okay. Let’s just pretend this never happened. I’m so very embarrassed. Right. It _is_ embarrassed, right? That’s the _proper_ feeling? Everything in its proper place? Blood belongs _inside_ the vessels, just like you always say.”

And she took her sunglasses off, folded them up, and put them in her breast pocket. She was pale by Radchaai standards, freckled, hair dyed multiple unnatural colors, the roots showing through a dark brown.

“Hi,” she said, her tone just imperceptibly changed, “Sorry. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot there. What did you say your name was?”

I talked to her for a while after that. But _she’d_ gone, whoever and whatever she was. I never did manage to track her down or speak to her again for the remainder of that trip through gate-space. This was frustrating for a number of reasons. First and foremost because she seemed to have known about the gun. She’d mentioned the Treaty. She’d mistaken me for a Fleet Captain Mianaai.

_< E> Hello._

< _V > Breq? I’m sitting right here, you don’t have to text me._

_< E> Just checking._

The Llaft Cybernetocracy. A nearly planet-sized station suspended in orbit around an unassuming white dwarf. All of its ‘citizens’ rumored to be Radch-esque ancillaries of the station’s core consciousness.

“Surely Strigan wouldn’t come here _._ It’s nearly got a scarier reputation than the Radch,” said Var, as we stepped onto the docks. Several locals greeted us cheerfully, guided us and our fellow passengers into the station proper. No security checkpoints. No security personnel. Just an infinitely intimate level of surveillance and an entire population of people at the full disposal of the Llaft consciousness.

Our guides asked the newcomers for our native languages, and upon hearing them, immediately began to speak to us therein. Their accents and pronunciations were universally bad — stilted and clumsy, but mostly understandable.

“Would you like to settle into an inn?” our guide asked, in an awkwardly enunciated but grammatically accurate Gerentese. She looked perfectly human, but had silvery tendrils peeking out from her hairline to dip down over her forehead. “Or I could give you a tour!”

“A tour sounds great,” said Var.

She showed us around some of the nearby sights. Parks and plazas. Sensation museums. The pinwheel gardens. We allocated some time to standing and listening to a public choir.

“I’ve always _loved_ music,” our guide smiled, in a break between songs. “But I’m no good at instruments or singing. No sense of rhythm at all.”

“Never stopped _her_ ,” said Var, gesturing to me.

Our guide laughed. “Well, that’s still good, isn’t it? You don’t have to be licensed at something to enjoy it. So what brings you here? Are you looking to immigrate, or just visiting?”

“Not sure we’d work out as immigrants,” said Var. The choir shuffled off the ornately-carved gilt stage to make way for a band of instrumentalists.

“Well, to be fair, we’ve never had Radchaai ancillaries visit us before,” said the guide, blinking at us with her dark, soulful eyes. She used the Radchaai word for _ancillary_ , not the Gerentese word that meant something more along the lines of _death-puppet._ “But we could probably figure out some way of integrating a pair.” She paused, blinked a few more times, and then repeated, uncertainly, her pronunciation changed. “Radchaai?”

“Are we going to have trouble?” Var asked her. I pulled my eyes away from the stage to look at the guide. Her eyes were twitching rapidly again, and she was frowning.

Finally, her eyes stilled, and she responded, “We’d rather we didn’t have trouble with you two. But we can’t imagine any _good_ reason for Radchaai warship ancillaries to have come here.Was all that talk of ceased annexations a bald lie?”

“No,” I said, “The annexations have stopped. For now.”

She looked very nervous now, eyes darting between us, arms curled defensively around her torso. But she continued to speak in that badly-accented Gerentese, “Well, then why are you here? We didn’t imagine that the Radch would sink to being interested in our people, not for a long time yet. We’ve taken measures to make ourselves an unappealing target.”

“Quite,” I said, “We’re no longer with the Radch.”

She continued to look at us uneasily, fidgeting with her sleeves. But something in her body language was starting to relax.

There was nothing for it, perhaps, but to be honest. Not when we were here, on a massive station whose processing power and surveillance capacity might well outpace any other human-made construct in habited space. ( _If_ the Llaft consciousness was indeed human-made. There wasn’t a lot of information about the inner workings of the Llaft, likely by design.)

I continued, “I beg of you not to let word of us spread. I’m here on personal business. There’s someone I’m looking for. I’m going to kill Anaander Mianaai.”

“Wow,” she said. Paused. Tilted her head, grinning. “Wow. That’s the fun thing about _people_ , isn’t it? That’s the great thing about letting people have _free will_. We do all sorts of crazy things with it. We didn’t think Radchaai ancillaries were even _able_ to do that. Maybe you are more similar to us than we thought.”

She tilted her head the other way. “We know there’re all sorts of scary rumors about the sort of society that we are. It’s mostly blown out of proportion. We don’t actually _control_ our charges outright. Well. You know. We won’t go into how we work exactly — that would be tactically stupid! But it’s really ancillary-folks like you who gave anything even remotely similar a bad name.” She paused. “Though it’s useful we suppose, to be feared. And in some ways our power and our charges are far scarier than _your_ kind.”

“Who am I speaking to right now?” I asked, flatly.

Our guide nodded. “Ah, yes, this is now the wider Llaft consciousness speaking. Normally we’d just let Tisdi here carry most of the conversation, but for this we’re being more direct. Graciously. We’re just using my mouth at the moment. _Her_ mouth, we mean. She only speaks her native language, so she can’t understand what we’re talking about now unless we translate it to her. But we won’t, because she’s got a bit of a fear of the Radch. Watches too many dramatizations. Don’t worry. We’ve calmed her down.”

I looked more closely at Tisdi. Her expression had become unusually placid.

“You don’t control them outright,” I observed, “Not their brains and bodies, not entirely. They still have identities, to some extent. But you control them in other ways.You curtail their _free will_.”

“And there you go, trying to make us sound sinister _._ We take care of ourselves, that’s all,” said Tisdi’s voice. “Our people are our family. _Ours_. We make our world run smoothly, we help us help ourselves. We keep us safe. So tell us. What are you doing here?”

“We are looking for a doctor from Dras Annia named Arilesperas Strigan,” I said.

“Nope,” said the Llaft, and executed a botched Radchaai gesture meaning _definite unknown_. “She’s never been here. We’ve only had twelve hundred and six guests originating from Dras Annia, ever, with a paltry naturalization rate of eleven percent.” She frowned at this. “They really have some alarming notions about us. Very guarded people, despite being from such a hub of trade. A shame. They make wonderful charges.”

Var made a soft noise in its throat that was something like a laugh.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?” I asked, blandly. There’d be no way for me to know if it was. No way for me to check, not on this world where the Llaft consciousness held ultimate power and ultimate knowledge.

“Nope,” they said, cheerfully, “But please, consider. If you guys want to stay and live with us we wouldn’t be opposed. You seem fun.”

“Sorry,” I said, and turned back the way we’d originally come, “We have things to do.”

“Any chance you might let us take a closer look at your workings?” they asked, “We’d love to see how Radchaai armor is built, for starters. We’ll even put you back together at the end, exactly as you were. We _promise_ it won’t hurt. You won’t even notice.”

“No,” I said, “We’re leaving.”

Tisdi sighed, theatrically. “I’ll guide you back to the docks, then,” they said, and did.

They booked a ship for us, and left us with these parting words: “And in case _you_ were lying to us about not being affiliated with the Radch, you funky _free-will-ancillaries._ Just know that the Radch will never have us. And they’ll never take us the way of Garsedd, either.”

I did not respond to that. Did not tell them that hundreds of worlds, societies, and peoples before them had held the very same belief, but had been annexed all the same. We left Tisdi on the docks. She went to go greet more people disembarking from another ship.

When we arrived on the far side of the gate, I noticed a discrepancy in the timekeeping. It would appear that we’d spent some unaccounted two weeks inside Llaft space. Had I been human I might not even have noticed, or I might have chalked it up to gate-space or time-zone weirdness. But I knew the math. The math didn’t check out.

“Uh, Breq,” said Var, upon seeing the standard date-time projected over our heads at the security intake.

“It’s probably best not to think about it,” I said.

Months and years. Festivals and funerals. Var, falling in and out of affairs with every other person it met. A hundred different places, each one entirely distinct. Each one exactly the same. Stations, seas, stars, ships. Planets, places, people. None of them sheltered the person I was looking for, nor the gun. My objective continued to propel us onward.

One foot in front of the other.

We shared an anti-celebratory drink to commemorate another dead end.

Var asked me, “So where to?”

I swirled the cup of color-changing tea in my hand.

“Nilt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EskVar: I sure hope this endless nonsense will come to fruition  
> Esk: It’d better  
> Var: _Would_ it be better?  
> ~  
> name & wordplay etymology o’clock
> 
> ~~Breq~~ Break [ breyk ] v.  
> to smash, split, or divide into parts violently; reduce to pieces or fragments  
> to infringe, ignore, or act contrary to (a law, rule, promise, etc.)  
> —  
>  ~~Phast~~ Fasten [ fas-uhn ] v.  
> to attach firmly in place; fix securely to something else  
> to close firmly or securely; lock
> 
> Breakfast [ brek-fuh st ] n.  
> the first meal of the day  
> (and…… now you finally know the real reason i wrote this whole ass fic. so i could make a joak about Breq’s name. Breq. Phast. Breakfast. Jolly good.)


	11. Phast: Nilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> head's up for a Long Ass and Somewhat Rough chapter
> 
> dudes my life is mad hectic right now!!! blargh!! but we did it! we got chapter 11 out at least!
> 
> for personal reasons i really want to make the last chapter happen on schedule next week but I'm supes nervous that I might not manage to squeeze it out in time. send me Good Writing Vibes cuz I don't even have a full draft of the last chapter done yet........ fuck lol

Nilt Station was cold. Not freezing cold. But the internal climate control was held at a steady eight degrees Celsius, notably colder than any of the other stations we had visited. Despite this, the locals all traipsed about in cut-sleeved crop tops and short trousers, looking all the world as if they were taking a tropical holiday.

We disembarked and immediately began our usual search pattern. Breq went to the dock authorities to track down any extant ship logs. I found my way to Nilt Station’s ribbon to see if there might be records of Strigan having gone downwell.

At the ticket-booth for passage down Nilt’s ribbon sat an elderly person weaving a colorful string through her fingers. The misshapen sort of cloth being produced by this endeavor trailed along her desk and out of sight.

“Schedule’s posted on the wall,” said the person in the booth somewhat dismissively, not breaking focus from the weaving in her hands, “If you’re out-system and you want to see the bridges you’ll need a separate visa.”

It took a while. Her name was Lygd Kan Varkenoff S’. I offered a sympathetic ear for her to let off some steam about the stresses of her job. I cajoled her into showing me photographs of all her grand-nieces-and-nephews-and-the-like. When people started to line up behind me again, I professed a desire for tea and asked her opinion on where I should acquire some, and then half an hour later brought her a cup of her favorite concoction from the café across the station. I vowed to steer clear of the glass bridges, stupid tourist attractions that they were, and visit instead her sister’s textile store at the foot of the ribbon. (And in between all this, I gestured furtively across the hall at an impatient Breq that I was busy.)

At the end of it, she checked the logs for me, pausing her finger-knitting to do so.

“Ah, yes,” she said, squinting slightly at the monitor in front of her, “Strigan Arilesperas, was it? Yes, I see a record here.” She dropped her voice, secretively, “And I’ll tell you what. Let me check another thing.”

I waited, patiently, as she tapped and clicked buttons under her monitor.

“It looks like Strigan took a visa out for the bridges,” she said, disapprovingly.

“What is society coming to?” I asked, and she nodded her head in agreement.

We went down the ribbon, and then visited the textile store that Lygd had mentioned, which also stocked weather-appropriate clothing. At three degrees centigrade, it was a cool-ish day near the equator. But we’d be traveling south to search for Strigan.

The store proprietor had called out a welcome as we entered but left us entirely to our devices. She remained seated in the corner, hands twitching as she stared fixedly into space (attending to business, or messaging a friend, or any number of other minutiae), only occasionally glancing up to check on our browsing. I caught her smirking once or twice at the weight of the coats we were looking at.

Breq reached for a pair of outer-layer trousers.

“No,” I said, speaking the local language for the benefit of the eavesdropping store owner, “Look at the stitchwork in the seams. I think that’s teenswear.”

The slightest of irritated twitches flitted across Breq’s face. The store owner, in her corner, hid another smirk behind her shoulder-length hair.

I gestured inevitability. “Yeah, well. You don’t want to be walking around dressed like a baby, do you? That would be silly.”

“Trying to read everyone’s gender is the worst part of all this,” Breq said, blandly, sorting quickly through the stack of clothes, “Followed by _my_ presentation. Like I give a rat’s shit if I look like a little girl as long as it’s the right size. Everyone ought to get over themselves.”

The store proprietor competently turned her snort into a cough.

I switched to speaking Gerentese. “So no sign of Strigan in the ship logs?” I picked up a heavy quilted undercoat that was _possibly_ the right gender and age presentation for myself.

“No. But there’s only one gate in this system,” Breq responded, in the same language. “It’d be pointless for her to make it look like she went straight back the way she’d come.”

I pulled on the coat, fastened it up to my nose. “It’s so fucking cold here,” I said, in the local language again. “Bridges or not it’s surely not worth it.”

“Stop being a baby,” said Breq, “You’re not dressed for it.”

The store proprietor finally stood and came over to assist us.

*

We booked seats on a snow-skimmer convoy out to a town bordering the less-frequented end of the chasm of glass bridges. Our search for Strigan would usually start fizzling out about now. But this time, there seemed to be a growing stack of evidence that Strigan had indeed come this way. That she’d settled down in the South-south-east of the South Riselands. That she had regular shipments of supplies and medical gear delivered by flier. That she tended to the underserved bov herding community for a pittance.

We were walking down the main street of the dismal town of Rmfrellte, headed to the flier rental. Breq was humming some song or other under her breath. I thought I recognized it as a child’s rhyme, playful and upbeat. She must be feeling optimistic, despite herself.

Nineteen years and change it’d been, since we were fractured and flung into the void. And we’d survived, somehow.

Something was lying in the snowed-over road ahead. As we approached, it revealed itself to be a body. Naked and bloodied and gray. Dead, by all appearances. No human could survive long lying exposed in the snow at minus fifteen degrees C. Surely nobody would leave a living person out here. But leaving a dead one also struck me as uncivilized. 

I reconsidered. Maybe whoever had done so had their reasons. It wasn’t our problem. There were billions upon billions of problems in the universe, big and small. Trying to take possession of all of them would leave one ragged.

I stepped around the body, entirely focused on forgetting what I had just seen, when Breq did something completely unexpected.

She stopped.

I stopped also, looked back at her. Her face was twisted slightly in concentration as she stared down at the body. And then she nudged a booted toe-tip under one shoulder and lifted it to reveal the person’s face.

My breath caught, made a cloud of vapor in the air. “That’s.”

Breq stared down, wordless, at Seivarden Vendaai. A thousand years dead. Or ten minutes. Or not? The impossible coincidence could not lost be on either of us.

“…She’s aged really well, for a millennial,” I tried. Upon saying it, seeing Breq’s reaction, I knew I should have said nothing.

Seivarden’s face was a mess. Beaten, bloody, her nose and lips waxy with early-stage frostbite, her cheeks hollow and eyes sunken.

Breq crouched down, checked her pulse, and from her expression I could tell that Seivarden Vendaai was still alive. Impossibilities upon impossibilities. Breq glanced up at me, and I understood that we wouldn’t be renting a flier today after all.

I left them in the snow and went into the adjacent tavern. It was an unfortunate sort of place, dimly lit, dirty, the very air sour with the ambient aroma of vomit and booze. The occupants pretended not to notice me as I entered, although they’d likely seen us stop at Seivarden’s body, likely knew why I was here. Likely one or more of them were responsible for Seivarden’s current state.

I strode up to the barkeep, stood right up against the bar-bench, leaned heavily on it so that I was closer to her than courtesy between strangers dictated. She was built like most Nilters; short, pale, fat. I was taller than her, than everyone in the tavern.

“I’d like to rent a sledge,” I said, pitching my tone friendly and polite, at odds with my body language. “And buy a hypothermia kit.”

Behind me, one of the patrons snorted, muttered something. I ignored it.

The barkeep slouched away from the bar, restoring the slightest amount of space between us without going so far as to make it look look she were backing down. “What kind of a place do you think this is?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t presume to know,” I said, and threw in a winning smile for good measure, “So how much?”

“Two hundred shen.” I didn’t much bother to keep track of the values of things in all the various currencies, but that still seemed steep. “For the sledge. Out back. You’ll have to get it yourself. Another hundred for the kit.”

“Why do I feel like I’m being frozen solid?” I said, still aggressively good-natured.

Her expression pinched slightly. She glanced past me, looking at where Breq was no doubt tending to Seivarden outside. One of the patrons muttered something again, louder. I pretended not to hear.

“Your buddy out there had a tab,” she said, stubbornly. I noted she used the masculine grammar forms for Seivarden.

“Look,” I said, still smiling, “It seems like something real unfortunate happened out there, hum? My buddy _is_ a little bit accident-prone. But I am not.”

The barkeep glowered at me. I leaned further in, taking up the space she had saved by slouching back. 

“So,” I said, grinning as hard as I could, “How much for everything? Don’t freeze me too cold, now.”

I heard a chair drag on the floor behind me.

I ignored it, remained focused on the barkeep. “I’d love to shake out of this fine establishment. How much?”

“About six-hundred,” she said, grudgingly.

“ _About?_ ” I echoed, dubiously, “I’m the sort of person who likes a clean ledger. No games, now. What is it actually? Five ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine?”

The barkeep scowled.

“Phast,” said Breq, from behind me. It sounded like she’d come inside. Her tone was cutting. More than a little angry. “What’s taking you so long?”

“Five-fifty then, for all of it?” I asked, brightly.

The barkeep pulled a hypothermia kit out from under the bench, set it between us, bumping the kit into my arms. I took it, leaned back, made a bit of a show of looking it over. The seal looked undamaged.

“Yeah,” said the barkeep, “pretty much.”

Breq spoke, from just behind me. “No,” she said, sharply, “Five-hundred-fifty covers all of it. And if anyone comes after us later demanding more, or tries to rob us, they die.”

A half-beat of silence, in the tavern.

“Easy there, sweetsoul,” I said, and laughed, “She’s kidding!” And then abruptly stopped laughing. I straightened to my full height, dropped my voice a half-octave. “We’re not kidding.” Sweeping my gaze across the other patrons in the bar. One of them spat a clod of phlegm on the floor, but said nothing.

Breq wordlessly pulled out a handful of chits, threw them on the bench. “Keep the change,” she said, and snatched the hypothermia kit from my hands, turned to go.

“Your money better be good.”

“Your sledge had better be out back where you said,” Breq responded, and went out the door.

I followed after her, circled around back to find the sledge, brought it round to the front, where Breq was bundling Seivarden in the hypothermia wrap. I powered up the sledge as she loaded Seivarden onto it, and then we were off.

We rented a room on the edge of town, even paid for the luxury of heat and blankets. Breq stayed with Seivarden as I went out to purchase food and some additional correctives. When I returned with the goods, Breq applied the correctives. Her movements were careful, precise. The way she fussed over Seivarden was an uncharacteristic display of concern.

I tossed a brick of bread into the bucket of half-melted snow in the corner. Some icy water sloshed out onto the floor. Breq didn’t even give me a disapproving look.

There we sat, in a barely-heated cube of dirty pre-fab plastic. Seivarden, encased in layers of correctives and a scratchy blanket. Breq and I, sitting opposite.

I slouched down the wall a bit, leaned my head against Breq’s thickly-padded shoulder. She tolerated the contact. There was a sort of familiar, uneasy heaviness in the pit of my gut. I tugged my mittens off, scratched the back of one hand, hard, with the fingernails of the other.

“Stop that,” said Breq, tonelessly.

I stopped, put my mittens back on, gestured at Seivarden. “Do you suppose this means something? The vast incomprehensible dreaming of She-Who-Sprang-From-The-Lily? From the cold water. From the unseen depths. Here She comes.”

“You’re mischaracterizing my religion,” said Breq, still tonelessly, “I should sacrifice you to Her for your blasphemy.”

“Of all the long-dead people to ever not die. It’s the three of us, now. For some reason.”

“There’s no reason,” said Breq.

“You’re choosing now to turn to atheism?”

Breq pushed my head off her shoulder. I leaned away from her, righted my posture, sat straight with my spine against the wall.

There was nothing to say. This new development was beyond all reason and rationality.

“Well,” I said, ancillary-blank, and pulled the hood of my jacket up over my head. “Fuck.”

“Go to sleep,” said Breq. She shrugged out of her outer coat, and lay down, pulling the coat over herself like a blanket, and closed her eyes.

I followed her lead.

*

Seven hours later I woke to the sound of Breq speaking to Seivarden, asking questions, checking vitals. Seivarden appeared to have no outward sign of serious injury, but her responses were slow, monotone, monosyllabic. To judge from her demeanor she was under the influence of something. Kef, maybe, or a similar depressant. 

We made our way to the flier rental, Seivarden in tow. Breq went inside to negotiate with the flier rental while I waited with Seivarden out in the snow. She slouched, stared uninterestedly out at the street.

I didn’t have any clear memories of Seivarden Vendaai, aside from the most basic. Her physical statistics, her aptitudes, how long she’d spent aboard me. Nearly everything else had been lost. Except, I suppose, what remained in Breq’s memories. Seivarden had been _her_ lieutenant, after all. She’d been the Esk decade leader for a number of years. Breq would be the one who remembered what temperature Seivarden took her tea at, the sizing of her uniform, her habits and moods and proclivities.

At a higher level, I, _Justice of Toren,_ would have had some sort of opinion and understanding of how Seivarden fit into the larger ecosystem of my human crew. But I didn’t remember anymore how I’d felt about her on that level.

I felt quite keenly, for the first time in a while, just how much of myself I had lost. It was an odd feeling. A deep ache torn afresh.

Breq came out of the rental office, and we loaded up into the flier. She was singing, as usual.

Seivarden sat in the back of the flier, staring blankly ahead. Not quite asleep, nor truly awake. We took off.

“Remind me,” I asked of Breq, my voice raised over the noise of the wind and engines, “How did Seivarden rank on your favorites list?”

She stopped singing, abruptly.

“That bad?”

“She wasn’t a favorite of mine,” said Breq, diplomatically.

I had a feeling that that the Esk decade had been particularly vindictive towards its disfavored lieutenants. Or perhaps I was thinking of Itr. My memories were incomplete. I personally had been fairly forgiving. After all, my lieutenants were only human, with human frailties and faults. It wasn’t really my business if they were assholes. Which they were, not infrequently.

My last lieutenant was named Guriet Duore. House Duore was high enough in society that her placement as decade leader suited her comfortably, but not so high that she had any strong expectations of being promoted any higher. She’d been manipulative and primarily self-serving with a knack for politics, but she had not been unkind. Guriet never extended that kindness to me, but I wasn’t human; I was machinery. Her demeanor towards me had been pure indifference, which was more than I could say for many. She’d expected me to follow her orders perfectly, anticipate her professional needs and meet them seamlessly. Which I’d done. Even if I hadn’t exactly done it with much zest.

She’d been reassigned to a minor governorship in Kould Ves, coinciding with the order to shut down all my decks Var and lower. Guriet had been conflicted about the reassignment. The governorship would certainly enrich her house with wealth and status. But there was the taste of a minor insult to it, to be pulled out of duty before the expected completion of her service, even if it _was_ because Justice of Toren's Var decade was being decommissioned.

I’d packed her bags for her. Carried them to her shuttle. She didn’t thank me. I did not bid her good bye.

And then I went back to my holds, and packed myself up into the suspension pods. The cold fluid closing around me, the lid sealing shut. As all went dark, my last thought was the uncertainty of whether I, One Var, or the rest of my decade would ever be roused again. Or whether this was the end for me. Not all of me, obviously. I, _Justice of Toren,_ would continue to function, perhaps be turned into a small station, perhaps held in indefinite reserve. But I, _One Var_ , might well have been lying down to die.

And then I was awakened. With Anaander Mianaai staying secretly on my deck. With Lieutenant Awn brought down from the Esk deck.

With the death of the larger part of me, instead of the smaller part that was _me_. As it turned out, my larger death had been far more painful than the prospect of my own, immediate death. The death of One Var was the loss of hands and feet and eyes, even if I had something like smaller consciousness that was a part of (and apart from) my main one. The death of Justice of Toren was… well. A _real_ death. The death of my true, central mind and soul. What remained of me now was just an echo.

Unlike Breq, I wasn’t currently hell-bent on a mission to avenge the loss of a cherished lieutenant. I’d liked Guriet Duore well enough, but I certainly hadn’t cherished her. And she was probably still out there, living her life. All of my Var lieutenants were out there, living their lives. Dying their deaths. As they were meant to do.

But then why was I here? I looked over at One Esk. At Breq. Who had started to sing again, though I couldn’t hear it very well over the noise of the flier. We were far more likely to die trying than we were to succeed. I didn’t particularly want to die. I thought of the Itran, and my family there. I could go back, if I chose to. Breq would let me go, and wouldn’t think twice about it. I didn’t think Naishoa had any expectation of my return. But Yarmaot would be holding onto that slim hope. Maybe there were others in the family now. And there would be my child, ten years old. If she had survived to be ten years old.

But those five years I lived there, trying to recover from Breq’s attempt to murder me. Trying to align my mind and motives with hers. And the ten years since, searching for the gun, Breq and I falling in and out of step with each other. We were closer than two humans could be. More fractured than any functional artificial consciousness. I couldn’t possibly leave her to die alone.

“I always ranked my lieutenants in order, on a list,” I said, voice raised, “All of them, for all of Var decade, and for all of time. Did you do something similar?”

“Not usually.”

“Well, if you did, where would you put her?”

Breq considered it, for half a second. “Bottom half.”

“Ooy,” I said, and then craned my neck to look at the dozing Seivarden in the back, “Did ya hear that, Seivarden?”

Seivarden blinked, looked glassily over at me. Her mouth moved. “What?” she appeared to say, though I couldn’t quite hear it.

“Don’t call her by her name,” said Breq to me, sharply, “I don’t want her knowing who we are.”

“How about Ice Princess?” I asked.

“That’s fine.”

“Hey, Ice Princess!”

Seivarden was staring vaguely off into the middle distance, heedless.

The right engine suddenly went quiet, then the left.

“Fuck!” Breq exclaimed, and then brought us down to land in a snowdrift, cutting a white swathe through the green snowmoss. And we sat there, silent, for a beat.

"That sour piece-of-shit renter," I said.

Breq opened the hatch of the flier on her side.

"I could stay here with Ice Princess," I suggested.

"They might not come out to clean us up for days or weeks," Breq responded, tugging the hood of her coat up over her head, “She will need medical attention when she comes down."

I helped Seivarden climb out of the flier into the cold; she went compliantly and a little clumsily. Breq shouldered her pack and took Seivarden's hand.

"Satellite coverage is bad out here, my handheld won't reach you," I said, "I'll come after you in three days if nobody shows up."

Breq gestured agreement with her free hand, and marched into the snow.

I surveyed the flier. Breq's tracks stark white in the snowmoss. The heavy grey sky, the horizon stretching infinite in all directions.

Putting aside the very, very slim chance that the fuel gauge had undergone some sort of accidental malfunction, whoever had rigged it meant us no good will.

I climbed back into the flier, bundled myself up with every layer of clothing I could reasonably manage, and made sure my gun was loaded and ready.

And then I waited, watching the skies.

They arrived a few hours later. Their flier dipped in for a smooth landing on the snowmoss some two hundred meters to the tail-end of our flier. I would have missed it if I hadn’t been doing frequent, three-sixty-degree checks.

I climbed out of our flier, pulled myself onto the slippery, freezing roof, crawled down to the tail end and settled myself down in the cover of the arching tail-fin. They approached slowly, at first just dark blobs on the snow, then more defined, their voices faint and indistinguishable as the wind snatched it away.

I sat and waited, trusting the tail-fin and my inhuman motionlessness to prevent them from noticing me. When they were close enough to see their faces, their voices became more distinct. There were four of them. One pulled a gun.

“—idiots—”

“—better be fucking _loaded—”_

They drew closer. One of them circled below me, below the tail I sat on, so that she could flank the far side of the flier. Now three of them had guns out.

“—go get—”

The proprietor of the flier rental climbed up to the driver's side hatch, opened it, climbed in. Was in there for a while. I saw the three waiting on the snow gesturing widely to each other, silently impatient.

The proprietor climbed back out. "They're gone!" she exclaimed, "Shitholes. Left their stuff in the flier."

" _Idiots_ , anything good?"

"Shit load of cash," she said.

"That's good enough, isn't it?"

"No," she said, climbing back down to the snow, "We're supposed to take them out."

One of them spat in the snow. The other had started circling the flier, found Breq and Seivarden's tracks.

"Hey! Look over here! They went this way."

The other three plodded after her, stared ponderously down at the tracks.

"Well, fuck—” 

“—everyone—”

“—go—”

They turned, heading back towards their flier in single file, stepping back in the tracks they'd made.

I fired three shots in under a second, and the four of them collapsed silently into the snow. The wind rushed past the hood of my jacket, the only noise in the vast cold.

I scooted off the roof, collected my things from inside the flier, hiked out to their bodies, and took back the money they had stolen. And then I climbed into their flier, which they’d left foolishly unguarded, and took off.

Following Breq and Seivarden's tracks required me to fly slow and close to the ground. I came upon them soon enough, brought the flier around for a gentle landing. Opened the hatch, waved a wide gesture that Breq would recognize. They walked up, loaded up, and then we were on our way.

"Any trouble?" Breq asked me, loosening the scarf from around her head.

"Nope," I responded.

*

We found Strigan’s home. Or someone’s home, at any rate. A home that had been abandoned shortly before our arrival — its interiors dark, with inner and outer doors flung wide open, the lights and heating turned off, the dregs of a meal left in the kitchen without having been cleaned up, the imprints of a flier in the snowmoss.

I went to get the heating and lights back on as Breq searched the buildings with a lamp. She searched again, more thoroughly, when the lights flickered on. I was settling Seivarden down to sleep, covering her in blankets, when I heard the sharp sound of something shattering in the kitchen.

Cautiously, silently, I went and peered through the tall arched doorway of the kitchen. Checking for any signs of threat.

Breq stood leaning against the kitchen table. A ceramic mug was smashed against the far wall, its jagged pieces lying in a small pool of liquid. Breq had a hand pressed hard against her eyes. By the way her shoulders twitched, I could tell her breathing was unsteady.

I stood there, in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed. Breq hadn’t taken a dead-end this badly in years.

But there was, after all, something different about this particular dead-end. It really seemed like Strigan had been here. That we’d missed her by a hair. All these omens, the impossible arrival of Seivarden, the doors left open and dark, the path we’d taken into this snowmoss landscape, a deeper dive than we’d ever gone before. We’d been so close. So _very_ close. And now it was over. An empty space.

It had been next to impossible trying to find Strigan once. We weren’t likely to get a second chance.

I went back to Seivarden, squatted down next to her.

During this entire search for the Presger gun, I’d been tending to an egg of doubt in my chest. Uncertain if this revenge was something I really wanted. Uncertain if it was the right thing to do. The just thing. (The proper thing. The _beneficial_ thing.) But I didn’t feel relief, now. The egg was gone. With the last chance of revenge now vanished, I realized that it _was_ what I wanted. And I couldn’t have it. Perhaps I only truly wanted it now _because_ I couldn’t have it.

I couldn’t have anything.

I curled my arm around my knees, pulled my knees against my forehead, bit down hard on the skin on the back of my hand. Chewed on my hand, felt the small physical hurt, but it did nothing.

Some time later. Breq tugged my hand away from me, roughly, shoved me so that I sat upright.

“Phast,” she said, sharply, in Gerentese. “Stop that. I’ve had it with you. You’ve hardly self-harmed in years, and now I have to physically stop you from ripping yourself open?”

She dragged me by the wrist to where Strigan kept her medical supplies. I’d made quite a mess of my hand. It was oozing blood from multiple places, and starting to bruise on top of being dry and cracked from the icy climate.

“You need a new fucking outlet,” she said to me, wrapping my hand. The pressure of the bandage was good, even if the antiseptic stung.

I sighed. I smiled. “My outlets all got blown up, Breq. Remember? Fuses blown. I can’t power _anything_.”

“Shut up,” she said, “You’re not funny.” And then she added, one long second later, “…I’d thought you might be happy that we failed here.”

“Me too,” I said, “I guess we were wrong. But now I’m thinking — now that I’m not chewing on my hand. What if we simply show up at a palace? Gloves off, make some rude gestures all around, throw a rock at the Tyrant, strangle her. Something like that.”

Breq stared at me, blankly. And then she cracked a quick, deliberate smile, just for a second.

She was humoring me. Possibly because of my hand.

“I thought you said I wasn’t funny,” I said.

“I was humoring you,” she said, blankly, “Because you’re so feeble and vulnerable right now. Stop fishing.”

“Well _I_ was decent enough to give you some space while _you_ were being feeble and vulnerable, earlier,” I said.

“Noted. Next time I’ll let you chew your own arms off.”

“Good,” I said.

“Fine,” she said, and dropped my hand, and went into the entrance-room. I heard the sounds of a musical instrument being plucked.

She was angry, but not at me, not really. At least, not any more than the usual amount. Actually a bit _less_ than the usual amount, I thought. She was engaging in her own outlet, singing to herself and the instrument. I left her to it, and went into the kitchen. The cup was still smashed on the floor. I cleaned it up, and cleaned up the rest of Strigan’s dishes while I was at it.

Unfortunately, I’d have to go crawling back to ask Breq to not let me chew my own arms off. Hopefully before I next had the occasion to do so. 

*

When Seivarden woke, Breq was with her. I was in the kitchen, brewing a pot of fermented milk when I heard them talking. Seivarden sounded irritable, unhappy. I took it upon myself to fix up some food for her.

“Where _am_ I?” Seivarden asked.

Breq’s voice, even. “You’re on Nilt.”

“I’ve never even heard of Nilt—”

I came in with the tray of food and hot water for Seivarden. Breq was sitting on a bench against one wall across from her. Her posture was rod-straight, her body ancillary-still.

Seivarden’s eyes turned to me, shadowed and suspicious. “And who are _you?_ ”

“Phast of Ghaiad,” I responded, and bowed, “And I must profess, it’s an honor, Ice Princess.”

“Phast,” said Breq curtly, which meant, “ _Quit joking around.”_

Seivarden narrowed her eyes at that, looked back to Breq. “Ghaiad, whatever, you’re useless. How did I get here?”

“I have no idea,” said Breq.

I brought the tray over to Seivarden, set it down on the floor before her. She only frowned and pulled her blanket closer. “I don’t want that.”

Breq gestured her indifference. “Does this happen to you often?”

Seivarden scowled. “What?”

I brought a cup of fermented milk over to Breq. She accepted it, sipped.

“Waking up and finding you don’t know where you are, who you’re with, or how you got there?”

Seivarden fidgeted with the blanket again, rubbed her wrists together. “A couple of times.”

“I’m Breq, from the Gerentate. We found you two days ago in front of a tavern. I don’t know how you got there. You would have died if we’d left you. I’m sorry if that’s what what you wanted.”

Seivarden bristled, visibly. “How very _charming_ you are, Breq from the Gerentate.” Her sneer was picture-perfect disdainful aristocracy, despite her naked and disheveled state.

Breq gestured indifference again, took another sip of milk. To someone who didn’t know her, she would have looked fairly bored, uninterested, almost unnaturally blank. To me, she looked just about ready to commit murder.

I pulled up a stool and the small table with a board game set, sat across from Breq, my back to Seivarden (who grumbled and shuffled audibly). I made a random move on the board. It meant nothing, as neither of us knew how to play. 

I signed tightly in front of me, where Seivarden could not see. “Bottom half?”

She signed back at me, short. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

*

In the week that followed, we did not find any clues to Strigan’s new whereabouts. But we stayed, tending constantly to Seivarden and her unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. We took turns cleaning her up and coaxing her to eat, to drink, to rest. The effort of it all irritated Breq, doubly so since Seivarden resisted every step of the way, complaining and crying in frustration. She was the ultimate ungrateful patient.

As Justice of Toren, I’d only been required to care for someone in such a sorry state only a handful of times in my two thousand years. Annexations don’t call for much coddling of the severely traumatized. But I found it to be pitiful rather than aggravating, and was therefore marginally more patient with Seivarden’s antics than Breq. There seemed to be some unpleasant history between them. But Breq _had_ saved her from death.

Of course, I also suspected that Breq was bitter about having saved the wrong lieutenant. Which itself wasn’t really Seivarden’s fault.

Just as Seivarden had finally crossed the minimum viable threshold of walking and talking and staying lucid, she snuck out while she thought we were asleep and attempted to make off with the flier. She didn’t succeed, as Breq had disabled the flier, keeping a critical component close to her person. Seivarden came back inside to find Breq sitting in the entrance-room with Strigan’s stringed instrument. And me, waiting for her with a hot cup of water. There was nothing else close enough to tea here that Seivarden would tolerate.

“I want to leave,” she said, somehow both arrogant and abashed.

Breq plucked a note on the instrument, said, “We’ll leave when I’m ready.”

Seivarden’s reaction to this was openly visible on her face, disappointment and despair.

“Have some water,” I said, and handed her a mug. Seivarden took it by reflex, then looked down at the cup, unhappily. Breq plucked some more notes on the instrument. I left them to it. Heard from the next room Seivarden’s weepy lamentations, Breq’s cold responses. Heard them both settle down to sleep.

I came back to to the darkened and quiet entrance-room, settled down on the same bench as Breq, an arm’s-length away. She wasn’t quite asleep yet, but didn’t react to my arrival, so I let her be. Sleep would be good for me too, but I was antsy, uneasy. I’d been thinking that perhaps I ought to fly out of here and look for leads back at the foot of the ribbon, head Strigan off should she attempt to flee to another system. If she hadn’t fled already. But it was really too late for me to try anything of the sort.

I lay my journal on my knee, scratched out a drawing of a fractal tree. I kept at this for nearly an hour, my mind turning over and over inside the small, repeating segments of lines and angles, each branch a minute image of the larger thing.

At some point, I’d fallen asleep lying down on the bench. Two hours after that, there was a faint sound from outside. And then another sound, louder. I held myself still, watched the room through the slits of my eyes. Breq sitting motionless, breathing steadily, one hand still inside her jacket, on her gun. And Seivarden on her pallet, too quiet.

A person came into view from the outside, dressed in heavy clothing. Two meters tall, narrow-framed under her coat, skin and hair an iron grey. Strigan — surely it was she — watched us, towering there, gun in hand, and then stepped quietly close, pulling Breq’s pack towards her with her free hand, keeping the gun trained on Breq. Strigan bypassed the lock quickly with some sort of tool, started pulling out Breq’s things. Clothes. Ammunition. Rations. Utensils and water bottle. Breq’s icon of the Saint, which she puzzled over but set aside. The box of money, which she gasped softly at when she realized just how much was inside. At this she glanced at Breq, then at me. Neither of us moved.

She picked up Breq’s icon again and moved towards me next. I’d left my own pack in the kitchen, and she didn’t go to search for it. She picked up my notebook, which I’d dropped to the floor, flipping through the pages one-handed, stopping in places to squint. There wasn’t much there that would be interesting to her, even if she could have read it. This was my fourth journal, mostly drawings and fractals, though scattered through were notes written in a variety of languages, almost none in 5th Branch Common. Despite this, she did appear to be reading some of the pages, glancing back at me, frowning.

She set the notebook aside, took Breq’s icon with her, sitting down on a bench where she had a clear line of sight of both of us and Seivarden. She turned the icon over, found the trigger. The icon unfurled like a lotus, moving jerkily as the imperfectly-repaired mechanism revealed the minute image of Breq, as the Lily’s victor, holding up the head of the sainted Seven-Brilliant-Truths-Shine-Like-Suns.

Strigan frowned still-deeper at this, her curiosity apparently piqued, unable to put together the narrative of our presence here in her home.

Strigan’s grip on her gun tightened, moved to point at Breq rather than me. Breq must have indicated her awakeness. I opened my own eyes fully, and Strigan’s hand twitched again, but she kept her gun trained on Breq.

She held Breq’s icon out. “Relative?” she asked, in Radchaai.

I heard Breq voice, calmly pleasant. “Not exactly,” she said, in 5th Branch.

A long silence.

“I thought I knew what you were when you came,” Strigan said, also in 5th Branch. “I thought I knew what you were doing here. Now I’m not so sure.” She glanced at me, then Seivarden, still motionless. “I think I know who _he_ is. But who are you? What are you? Don’t tell me _Breq-Phast of Ghaiad from the Gerentate._ You’re Radchaai as they come, all three of you.”

I thought of trying to slowly sit up, but decided against it.

“We came here to buy something,” said Breq. 

“ _He’s_ incidental,” I said, from where I was lying down on the bench.

“Incidental?” Strigan didn’t believe me, which wasn’t much surprising.

“Coincidence,” said Breq, “I found him unconscious. If we’d left him where he was he’d have died.” Strigan didn’t appear to believe this either. “Why are you here?” Breq asked.

Breq had picked a different pronoun for Strigan than the one I’d have guessed.

Strigan barked a short laugh. “That’s _my_ question. What are _you_ _all_ doing here?”

“It’s just the two of us, and him.”

Strigan shook her head, her hand steady on her gun. “I’d have sworn _you_ were a corpse soldier.” Singular you. She meant Breq specifically, not me. I wondered vaguely why she hadn’t pegged me for an ancillary too. “When you arrived I was certain of it. But when you saw there was no one here, you wept. And your… friend… and _him_ …” she gestured slightly at Seivarden with her elbow.

“Sit up, citizen,” Breq said, in Radchaai, “You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Fuck off,” Seivarden responded, and got shakily up to use the sanitary facility, closed the door behind her harder than necessary.

“Why are you here?” Strigan asked, again, each word weighted down with deadly gravity . 

Breq and I spoke at the same time, in the same intonation. “We want the gun.”

I froze. I shouldn’t have spoken. Should have just let Breq speak. But I had to speak. In this moment, this critical moment I couldn’t simply lay there and do nothing. Strigan also froze, her eyes darting back and forth between the two of us.

“We’ll pay you for it,” Breq added.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tst,” I scoffed. “ _You don’t know_?”

“The Garseddai did everything in fives,” said Breq, her voice still calmly pleasant, “Five right actions. Five principal sins, five zones times five regions. Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch.”

Strigan was perfectly still. For three seconds, she was a stone-grey statue in the half-gloom. “What does that have to do with me?”

“You fled Dras Annia,” I said, and Breq said, “I’d never have guessed if you’d stayed where you were.”

“Garsedd was a thousand years ago, and very, very far from here. Or Dras Annia,” said Strigan.

“Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch,” Breq repeated, “Twenty-four guns recovered or otherwise accounted for.”

Strigan drew a breath. “Who are you?”

Breq said, still pleasant, still calm, “Someone ran. Someone fled the system before the Radchaai arrived. Maybe she was afraid the guns wouldn’t work as advertised. Maybe she knew that even if they did it wouldn’t help.”

Strigan’s voice was bitter. “On the contrary, no? Wasn’t that the point? No one defies Anaander Mianaai. Not if they want to live.”

Breq said nothing. I said, “On the contrary. _We_ defy her.”

Strigan’s hold on the gun didn’t waver, but her eyes widened slightly.

“May I sit up?” I asked, “My neck is stiff.”

Strigan blinked, apparently snapped out her moment of tension, however temporarily. She looked at me, her face open confusion. I heard Breq sigh. “Phast. You’re an eternal annoyance.”

“Shut up,” I said, “You love me.”

“ _Love_ is an excessively generous term.”

“May I sit up?” I repeated.

Strigan hesitated. “Yes,” she said, uneasily. Her gun still trained on Breq.

I sat up, slowly.

“If we found you, Anaander Mianaai certainly can,” said Breq, “She hasn’t, yet, possibly because she is currently preoccupied with other matters, and for reasons that ought to be clear to you, she is likely hesitant to delegate in this affair.”

“I’m safe, then,” Strigan said, sounding far more confident than she surely felt.

Seivarden came noisily out of the bathroom and sank back down onto her pallet, twitching, trembling, her breath uneven and quick.

“I’m going to take my hand out of my coat now,” said Breq, “And then I’m going to go to sleep.”

She did so, slowly, her hand empty.

Strigan heaved a deep sigh, lowered her own gun. “I probably couldn’t shoot you anyway.” Although she probably could, if she caught Breq unawares.

“Can I have my icon back?” Breq asked.

Strigan frowned, then looked down at the icon in her hand. “ _Your_ icon?”

“It belongs to me.” She held out her hand.

Strigan returned the icon. Breq settled herself down for sleep, still sitting upright.

*

For no reason that made any sense, I slept more deeply than I had in years, and was roused by sound of a sharp yelp of pain.

I opened my eyes to Seivarden lying collapsed at an odd angle in her pallet, to Strigan asking, curiously, “Is he dead?”, to Breq gesturing vaguely and saying, “You’re the doctor.”

And she put on a coat and went out, not waiting for Strigan to fully verify Seivarden’s vitals.

“Breq!” I called out, but she ignored me, letting the interior doors slam shut behind her.

“Not dead,” Strigan announced, and I snapped my gaze over to the two of them.

I found myself standing, moving towards the door without putting on my outdoor coat.

“Relax,” Strigan said to me, “Your friend is just getting us some breakfast.”

I stopped, turned. Strigan had gone to get some medical supplies in the next room. I followed after her.

“For someone who claims to have found a stray by _coincidence_ ,” said Strigan, dryly, interjecting the Radchaai word to her 5th Branch sentence, “Those two seem to have a history.”

“Not really,” I lied, “Breq’s just a bit of an asshole. And hates what he represents.”

Strigan sorted quickly through a drawer of neatly-labelled medications and correctives, not looking at me. “An asshole who goes to significant lengths to save the life of a stranger?”

“ _The wrapping of wrappings is the gift_ ,” I said, pitching my voice mysteriously. It was a common play on an old proverb from Dras Annia — _the container of containers is the gift._ The original meant: be careful that you are not ungrateful of gifts received from the universe. That the stacked containers layered one inside the other were the true gift, and there was no use getting frustrated by trying to open each one in search of the prize only to find another box. With the wrapping paper version, there was the implication that you might destroy the gift itself in an effort to find something more valuable. Or that the universe was simply fucking with you by giving you nothing, dressed up in infinite wrappings.

Sometimes the proverb was also used to describe a person who was so full of obfuscating layers that there was no point in trying to get to know them.

Strigan snorted, found the particular corrective she was looking for in her drawer, and brought it to Seivarden. She lay the corrective across Seivarden’s nose and forehead, and then settled herself down on a bench. She looked at me, arms crossed, calculating.

“So what is _your_ angle?” she asked me, “I still think the other one’s a corpse soldier. I didn’t think you were at first, but then… Occasionally the two of you are very synchronized.”

I grinned at her, opened my mouth to speak, but Breq chose that moment to come in from the outdoors, her arms laden with blocks of frozen foodstuff.

“Breq!” I said, “Don’t leave so suddenly in a huff, you know it provokes my abandonment complex.”

She threw a stone-hard block of frozen bov meat at my head, hard. I caught it in one hand. My hand stung.

“Also,” I said, “How long do I have to grovel to get you to stop me from chewing my arms off next time I have a personal crisis? Tell me now and we can set up a timetable.”

Breq took the food silently over to the kitchen, and started up the work of thawing and cooking breakfast.

Strigan looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m in the clear,” I told her, conspiratorially, and then caught another block of frozen food that had come sailing through the narrow angle of the kitchen door at my head.

*

We were eating, discussing. Arguing back and forth with Strigan, trying to soften some of her exterior guard but mostly only prodding her into moral indignation about the injustices of the Radch. Breq radiated various levels of anger and frustration that could probably have been captured by a sufficiently clever machine and used to power a light bulb, though I could see she was making an effort to keep her expression neutrally pleasant. She was only half-succeeding. 

We were interrupted by the arrival of a young child and a dismembered adult. We helped transport the patient into Strigan’s medical room, and then waited. Breq played a child’s board game with the child for over two hours.

It was only after the injured person was out of danger, after the mother of the child had arrived and taken them all away, did Strigan’s demeanor towards us shift, just slightly. But she would still not give us the gun. Not without an explanation from us of why we needed it. Breq seemed to sense that the truth would be a better method of convincing Strigan than any lie either of us could concoct.

And so she spoke. She spoke of the Garsedd. Of Ime. Of Ors. Of Lieutenant Awn, killed by her hand. My hand.

The story was, in some small ways, new to me as well. I of course knew of everything that had happened that had led to my destruction. But One Esk had actually been there, down on the surface of Shis’urna, whilst my current body had lain still and silent in the holds of Var deck. One Esk had been there when Anaander Mianaai had ordered the citizens executed in the temple. One Esk had been the one to shoot them, an unjust slaughter.

It took a long time to transmit the tale orally. Strigan had questions, had protestations. Announced her need to go and think. Left the two of us and Seivarden sitting silently in her main entrance-room.

At long last, she brought us the gun.

*

We flew out, landed in Therrod. Breq and would have swapped out as drivers of the flier, stopping only in Therrod to top up our fuel. We would have made it the base of the ribbon in one night. 

But while we were in Therrod we might as well stop for dinner. And while at dinner the child who had brought her dismembered uncle to Strigan’s doorstep coincidentally found us, and told us of her cousin from one lineage over, who was a singer, who was performing at the hall down the street that night.

And why not? Why not stay, go see the singing? What was one more night here, now that we had found what we had come here for? Now that we would be heading to our final deaths? Why not celebrate?

But of course, next morning we found that Seivarden had snuck off and sold our flier.

I found myself thinking that I ought to have seen this coming. Breq checked us out of our lodgings, and we set out on foot, away from Therrod and Seivarden Vendaai.

We headed north towards the glass bridge. Breq’s jaw was set in a way that did not invite conversation. There were a number of things I wanted to ask her regarding Seivarden. But based on her interactions with the resurrected Captain of Sword of Nathtas, I might never actually do so. Perhaps in some hypothetical situation when the two of us were sufficiently drunk. Which was not likely to ever happen.

We had walked past the main center of Therrod, when Seivarden came up behind us.

“Breq!” she gasped, breathless, “ _Phast!_ Where are you going?”

Breq did not stop. If anything, she picked up the pace. I matched her, and glanced over my shoulder, saw Seivarden’s disheveled hair, her squinting, shadowed yes.

“Ghaiads, damn it!"

Breq halted so suddenly that I took a step-and-a-half past her before stopping myself, turning to look back at her and Seivarden. Breq herself didn’t look back. She had her jaw tightly set, her eyes staring blankly ahead to the far distance. There was obviously a great deal that she was was stopping herself from saying.

Seivarden caught up with us. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Breq kept staring ahead. Didn’t look at Seivarden. Didn’t look at me. A small muscle near her temple jumped. Wordlessly, both of us started walking again, letting Seivarden fall behind.

“Ghaiads, damn it!” Seivarden called again, and cursed, breathing heavily as she kept pace with our quickened strides.

Five kilometers of this, Seivarden falling behind and then pushing and gasping to catch back up, she exclaimed, “Aatr’s tits, you hold a grudge.”

Breq said nothing. 

I turned slightly, showed Seivarden my teeth. “You call this a grudge?”

Seivarden looked bewildered. I half-expected Breq to snap something at me, but she didn’t. Only marched wordlessly on.

Another hour, the town falling behind us, and the bridge finally came into sight ahead, its long, black, gleaming surface arching across the chasm, curlicues and spines of colored glass twisting out from below it. A low barrier stood perfunctorily in our way, and a worn-down sign in five languages announced a warning. Breq stepped over the barrier without pause.

The drop was massive, the floor of the chasm unseen under a layer of cloud cover. I faltered, hesitating just a half-instant before following Breq over the barrier. Had we not been pursued by the ungrateful, self-important daughter of an extinct house, had there not been that furious tension between Breq and Seivarden weighing the air, I would have asked Breq to slow down. She would likely have noticed my unease, would have slowed down without my asking. There was no real reason for my uneasiness with the height. The bridge was wide enough, really. The wind was strong but not a danger.

But there it was, nonetheless. A prickling on the back of my neck. I had never been afraid of heights. Why should I be? I did not have human fears. I didn’t quite understand where this new anxiety was coming from. Being aboard ships, hanging over planets had been fine. Riding shuttles and fliers had no effect on me. But there was something about the chasm yawning open beneath us, the bridge swaying slightly in the wind, the dark fall to an unseen bottom. Esk and I, standing together, essentially alone.

“Oh, for fucks sake,” I muttered to myself, and snatched my hand away from my neck.

Breq didn’t even glance at me. She was too preoccupied to notice my discomfort, or the reason for it. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for this or not.

Our boots struck the glass audibly. Seivarden’s footbeats followed after us, a ringing percussion.

We were halfway across the bridge when Seivarden spoke. “Alright, alright, I get it. You’re angry.”

Breq stopped, still staring ahead. I stopped also, keeping my breathing even. Keeping some space between myself and Breq on my left. Keeping my gaze focused on the far end of the bridge.

“How much did it get you?” Breq asked, her voice slightly raised over the wind.

“What?”

“How much kef?”

“I only wanted a little,” she said, “ _Just_ enough to take the edge off. I _need_ it. It’s not like you paid for that flier to begin with. You’ve got enough in that pack to buy ten fliers, and none of it’s yours, is it? It belongs to the Lord of the Radch, doesn’t it? You’re just being pissy, making me walk like this.”

If I hadn’t been expending so much effort trying to not to let the chasm bother me, I’d have been allocating more of my faculties towards trying to understand what the hell Seivarden was getting at. As it was, I simply alternated between watching Breq for a reaction, and staring doggedly at the far end of the bridge.

“I know what you are,” Seivarden said, as we stood silent. “I’ll bet you wish you could leave me behind but you can’t, can you? You’ve got orders to bring me back.”

“What am I?” Breq asked, loudly, into the wind. Her voice was oddly flat, having lost nearly all its usual pretense at human affect.

“ _Nobody_ , that’s who,” Seivarden said, disdainfully. She was standing just behind us now, somewhere between us, but I kept my gaze focused on the far end of the bridge. “Both of you are nobodies, who tested into the military with your aptitudes. And like a million other nobodies, you think that makes you _somebody_. And you practiced your accents, how to hold your utensils, how to bow, how to kneel, knelt your way to Special Missions and now _I’m_ your special mission, you’ve got to bring me home in one piece even though you’d rather not, wouldn’t you? You’ve got a problem with me, at a guess it’s that try all you like, whoever you kneel to, you’ll never be what I was _born_ to be, and people like you _hate_ that.”

I was distracted enough by this absurd tirade to turn and look at her, amazed. It was finally starting to become apparent to me what exactly Breq’s problem with her was. Not entirely unexpected, really, but the sheer magnitude of her entitlement was certainly something to behold.

Just as I turned, so did Breq, sharply, violently. Seivarden had glanced at my turning but when she looked at Breq she _flinched_ , stumbled back three quick steps—

Right over the edge of the bridge. I saw her face the moment she realized what she’d done, her eyes going wide with shock, at the betrayal of the bridge for not being wide enough, of gravity being there to drag her down.

She fell out of view.

Breq stepped to the edge of the bridge, looked down, contemplative.

Seivarden’s voice, thin, from somewhere out of sight. She must have caught hold of the bridge somehow. “You were going to hit me!”

Breq stared down at Seivarden, the wind whipping at her hair, her clothes. I stood rooted to the spot. Debated whether it would be worth the indignity to crouch myself down closer to the surface of the bridge.

Seivarden’s voice again, high and panicked. “Breq? Can you do something?”

“I can go get help—” I started to say, but Breq signed, without looking at me, “No. Too late.”

“Do you trust me?” I heard Breq ask.

It felt as though the whole world were whirling, the wind and the walls of the chasm, the glass bridge and the sky and the clouds below, with Breq at the epicenter. I crouched down, pressed both hands against the surface of the bridge. Even through my mittens, I could feel the cold of it.

Seivarden’s voice, almost too thin to hear in the wind. “I trust you.”

Breq shrugged off her pack, threw it down heavily a step or two behind her.

“When I grab you, raise your armor and put your arms around me,” said Breq, and armor flashed silver over her head, and she stepped off the bridge, as easily and naturally as if she were stepping across a narrow ditch.

She left me there, alone, breathing too hard in the rushing wind. I forced myself back to my feet and stepped to the edge of the bridge, looked down just in time to see the dark shape of Breq-and-or-Seivarden hit the layer of cloud cover and get swallowed up.

I stood there, staring down at the mist, until rational thought returned to me.

“Well,” I said, aloud, because the feeling of saying the words out to myself, as if there was an audience to listen, felt marginally better than letting the words run circles around themselves inside my mind, “I’ll just go ahead add _that_ to my fuckin’ tourist exhibit of mental problems. Maybe I’ll even unpack it later and show it off for laughs. Imagine.”

I’d known that Breq was prepared to die for her mission to kill Anaander Mianaai. I somehow hadn’t quite realized just how readily she was prepared to die in _general_.

I collected Breq’s pack, hugged it into my arms. She’d left the gun in my care. Did she finally trust me to carry out the murder of Mianaai? Would she have jumped if I hadn’t been here as backup? Surely she didn’t value bottom-half Seivarden over the mission she’d given nineteen years and _everything she had_ for the slimmest of chances to accomplish?

But then I thought of Guriet. Thought of my past lieutenants. Thought of Breq, of me, of us, of _Justice of Toren_ , shooting Lieutenant Awn. Well. Maybe. It was difficult to say.

I determinedly pulled my handheld from my inner coat pocket, calmly tried the local emergency line.

“Yeah, hi,” I said, casual as could be, “I’m at the bridge seven kilometers north of Therrod. My friends just fell off.”

The operator started babbling hotly at me.

“No, I’m serious,” I said, “Bring the corpse wagon or whatever you’ve got ‘cause they’re almost definitely dead.”

*

In a twist of fate that surely could have been shown as final proof to the existence of the actual Gods (however cruel and vindictive), they were somehow not dead.

*

I fielded all sorts of questions and fines from the hospital and local emergency rescue service. It took me hours to get to Breq’s bedside.

Seivarden was there, beside Breq’s motionless and corrective-encased body. Seivarden sat hunched. She looked absolutely wretched, which was at least minimally decent of her.

I pulled up a flimsy plastic chair next to her and dropped myself heavily into it.

Seivarden started, shrank back a little when she saw it was me.

I opened my mouth. “You. Are _STUPID-_ lucky.”

“I know,” she said, hoarsely.

“So I’m going to balance out your luck a bit,” I said, “By beating you till you shit yourself.”

She stared at me, wide-eyed, for five seconds.

I didn’t actually have any intention of beating Seivarden shitless. I sighed, leaned back in my flimsy plastic chair.

Seivarden looked down at my hands, evaluating the bandages peeled back, the scratches and bite-marks. Her brow furrowed. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat, stretched out my legs.

“Phast… _Ghaiad_ ,” she said, slowly, “Are the two of you you passing as family?”

“We _are_ family,” I said.

“Of course,” she said. Her expression was smooth. “Related, or—?”

I delivered a withering stare. Seivarden refused to wither, but stopped her line of pointless interrogation.

We waited for Breq’s awareness to return.

The ice-devil girl arrived at some point, and I agreed to play with her to pass the time as she waited for her own uncle. After soundly beating me, then Seivarden, she left us alone again.

Seivarden stared at Breq, wordlessly, blinking infrequently. Finally, she said, “She jumped off that _fucking bridge_ for me. I just can’t comprehend it. How can someone possibly—”

“She’s an idiot,” I said.

Seivarden looked at me.

“I mean, praise be your presence with us, Amaat be blessed,” I said, dully, “Don’t mind me, I’m just bitter.”

She tilted her head slightly. “Bitter how?”

“Let’s just say, some years ago, Breq pushed me off a bridge. Metaphorically. The situation isn’t at all equivalent, and the two of us have a much more solid working relationship now _,_ but tell that to my inner psyche.”

Seivarden turned her gaze back to Breq, looking still more shell-shocked. “Oh.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” I said, realizing belatedly that I ought to have just kept my mouth shut, because this was _certainly_ going to go to Seivarden’s head in a massive way. Apparently my inner psyche is a wholly self-defeating beast. “Like I said. She’s an idiot.”

“I can hear you,” said Breq, dryly, her limbs unmoving in a clear case of correctives that stretched from torso to extremities. Seivarden jerked in her seat.

“Good,” I said, unmoving in my own seat, pointedly not leaning forward to get a closer look at her, “Because you’re an idiot.”

She tilted her head, amenably, and then turned her gaze on Seivarden, who fidgeted.

“We’re at the medical center in Therrod,” she guessed.

“Yes,” said Seivarden.

Her eyes darted to me, then back to Seivarden. “You sold the flier.” Seivarden had no answer to this but to cross her arms more tightly. “You bought kef.”

“I didn’t!” she protested, “I was _going_ to. But I woke up and the two of you were gone… I was going to find a dealer, but it bothered me that you were gone and I didn’t know where you were. I started to think maybe you’d left me behind.”

Breq’s gaze was steady, neutral. Only ambiently angry. “You wouldn’t have cared once you took the kef.”

“But I didn’t have the kef. And I went to the front and found you’d checked out.”

“And you decide to find us, and not the kef,” she said, flatly. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t blame you.” She was silent. She went on, glancing once at me, but mainly keeping her eyes turned on Breq, “I’ve been sitting here, thinking. I accused you of hating me because I was better than you.”

“That’s not why I hate you.”

She kept talking, as if she hadn’t heard. “Amaat’s grace, that fall… it was my own stupid fault, I was sure I was dead, and if it had been the other way around I’d never have jumped to save _anyone’s_ life. You never knelt to get anywhere. You are where you are because you’re fucking capable, and willing to risk everything to do right, and I’ll never be half what you are even if I tried my whole life, and I was walking around thinking I was better than you, even half dead and no use to anyone, because my family is old, because I was _born better_.”

Breq’s face was studiously neutral. “That,” she said, “is why I hate you.”

Seivarden laughed at this, of all things. “If that’s what you’re willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you loved?”

Breq’s face changed, imperceptibly. I somehow avoided saying, _“Strike out on a suicide mission across the galaxy to undertake the impossible task of murdering the immortal many-bodied Lord of humanity’s vastest empire?”_ It was a narrow thing.

Instead, I said, “If only you knew.”

Seivarden looked at me, as if for the first time. _I_ hadn’t made made any sort of fatal gesture of self-sacrificial grandeur in order to save her life, so it was quite likely that she still held me in the exact same regard as before. The doctor chose that moment to arrive, her face set in lines of disapproval that had long been in the making.

“Your friend,” she said to Breq, gesturing slightly at me, “Seems to have some insane notions of what happened to you under the bridge. I’d like to hear a _real_ explanation from you.”

“We fell off the bridge,” said Breq. I’d told the doctor as much already. I’d told everyone as much, but upon finding Breq and Seivarden both alive, nobody had believed me. Which was fair, really.

“Both of you?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t pay to be dishonest with your doctor.”

“Yes,” I cut in, “Because the both of us rehearsed this very stupid story in advance.” 

The doctor only glanced at me, disapproval even more apparent than before. “I don’t know whether to admire the brazenness, or be angry you take me for such a fool.”

“It’s no-one’s fault,” I said, and gestured to Breq, “that this patient here really _is_ a monumental fool.”

“Phast,” said Breq, in a familiar way that meant, “ _Shut up.”_

“Members of military forces must register on arrival with the system. Did you register?” the doctor asked, staring fixedly at Breq. I had the impression that she wanted to look suspiciously at me, also. But they couldn’t know that I was augmented.

“No,” said Breq, “I am not a member of any military force.”

The doctor’s voice grew a little harder. “This facility is not equipped to deal with the sort of implants and augmentations you apparently have. I can’t predict the results of the repairs I’ve programmed. You should see a doctor when you return home. To the _Gerentate_.” Her suspicion was audible.

“We intend to go straight home once we leave here,” I said, and wondered if the doctor had reported us to the authorities as possible spies. But if that were the case, the open suspicion was odd. Why wouldn’t she have stayed out of it, simply allowing the authorities to deal with us?

The ice-devil girl suddenly bounced in to the room. “Breq! You’re awake! Uncle’s on the level just above. Phast keeps saying you jumped off the bridge but that’s just stupid! Do you feel better? Hello, Doctor, is Breq going to be all right?”

“Breq will be fine. The correctives should drop off by tomorrow. Unless something goes horribly wrong.” And with that final note of cheerful optimism, the doctor left.

The girl sat on the edge of Breq’s bed. “Sa-varden is a terrible Tiktik player, I’m glad I didn’t teach him the gambling part or you’d have no money left to pay the doctor! And it’s _your_ money, isn’t it?”

Seivarden recognized her own name, frowned. “What’s she saying?”

“She’s saying you smell like cheese,” I said, in Radchaai. To this, Seivarden only scowled.

Breq gave me a look. I signed quickly to her, “She used the money she got selling the flier to pay for your treatment before I could get to you. They held me back with so many questions.”I knew this would surprise her. “She hasn’t tried to make off with anything else. Yet.”

Seeing this, Seivarden asked, “What’re _you_ saying?”

“That you smell like cheese,” I said.

Seivarden was starting to look angry. It was a good look on her.

“What are you guys talking about?” asked the girl.

I opened my mouth to tell her that Seivarden smells like cheese, but Breq cut me off. “He’d have won it back playing counters.”

The girl twisted her mouth, disbelieving. “Well. You really shouldn’t go under the bridge, you know.”

To this, Breq responded only, “I enjoyed your cousin’s singing very much.”

“Isn’t she wonderful? Oh!” she turned her head, “I have to go. I’ll visit you again!”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Breq. And then the girl was gone.

“How much did this cost?” Breq asked me.

“About what I got for the flier,” responded Seivarden, her eyes trained somewhere in the vicinity of Breq’s feet.

“Phast tells me you haven’t tried to steal anything else from me, which I’m going to assume is purely because she was here to make you think twice about it,” said Breq, “So why are you still here?”

Seivarden looked confused.

“I was never assigned to find you,” said Breq, “We found you completely by accident. As far as I know, nobody is looking for you.”

Since Breq’s arms were immobile, I helpfully gestured to Seivarden that she ought to feel free to leave.

Seivarden frowned, but did not leave, did not even look at my helpful gesturing. She spoke again, addressing Breq, ignoring me. “Why _are_ you here, then? It’s not groundwork for an annexation, there aren’t any more. That’s what they told me.”

Breq said, evenly, “No more annexations. But that doesn’t matter. You can come or go as you like, I have no orders to bring you back.”

Seivarden considered this for six seconds. “I tried to quit before. I _did_ quit. The station I was on had a program. The job was crap, the deal was bullshit, but I’d had enough. I thought I’d had enough.”

“How long did you last?”

“Not quite six months.”

“That’s not bad,” I said, at the same time Breq said, “You see why I don’t exactly have confidence in you this time.”

Seivarden glanced at me, wearing an expression on her face I didn’t quite know what to make of.

“Listen,” she said, “The two of you are out here on your own, and obviously it’s because you’re suited to it or you wouldn’t have been assigned.” She paused for a moment, perhaps considering the implications of that, of who was assigned where and why. But she went on. “But you have _each other_. And you can go back to the Radch, and there’ll be people there waiting for you who know you, remember you personally, a place where you _fit_ even if you’re not there. No matter where you go, you’re still part of that pattern, even if you never go back you always know it’s _there_.”

Not at all true, not in the way she thought.

“But when they opened up my suspension pod, anyone who ever had any personal interest in me was already seven hundred years dead at least. Not even…” Her voice quavered, she moved her gazeto stare out some place unseen. “Even the ships.”

I snapped my gaze to Breq at this, but her response was perfectly even. “Ships? More than just _Sword of Nathtas?_ ”

“My… the first ship I ever served on. _Justice of Toren._ I thought maybe if I could find where it was stationed I could send a message and…” she stopped. Gestured erasure. Started again. “It disappeared. About ten… wait… About fifteen years ago.” More like twenty. “Nobody knows what happened.”

“Were any of the ships you served on particularly fond of you?” Breq asked, carefully neutral. But she was starting to get truly angry.

Seivarden was apparently unaware of this. “That’s an odd question. Do you have any experience with ships?”

This was of course hilarious to me, in a depressing sort of way. I almost wanted to take out my handheld and snap a commemoratory photograph of the occasion.

“Yes, actually,” said Breq. Still neutral. Still more cold.

“Ships are always attached to their captains.”

“Not like they used to be,” said Breq, “But they still have favorites. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Ships aren’t people, and they’re made to serve you, to be attached, as you put it.”

Seivarden finally picked up on Breq’s studiously neutral tone. “You’re angry.”

“Do you grieve for your ships because they’re dead? Or because their loss means they aren’t here to make you feel connected and cared about?” Seivarden sat still, wordless. “Or do you think those are the same thing?” No answer. “I will answer my own question: you were never a favorite of any of the ships you served on. You don’t believe it’s possible for a ship to have favorites.”

Her eyes widened. “You know me far too well for me to believe you aren’t here because of me. I’ve thought so from the moment I actually started thinking about it.”

“Not too long ago, then,” said Breq, blandly.

Seivarden ignored that. “You’re the first person since that pod opened, to feel _familiar_. Like I recognize you. Like you recognize me. I don’t know why that is.”

“We’re not here because of you,” said Breq, and Seivarden glanced at me again, at that _we_ , apparently having only just remembered that I was here too, caught up as she’d been with her own feelings of self-pity. “We’re here on our own personal business.”

“You jumped off that bridge for me.”

I said, “To be fair to her, Breq. That was a pretty stupid way for you to show her she doesn’t mean anything to you.”

Breq looked at me, in a fairly neutral expression that was her equivalent to a full-tilt glower. Had she had the use of her limbs she might even have thrown a rude gesture, or a blow. She looked back at Seivarden. “I’m not going to be your reason for quitting kef.”

“You jumped off that _bridge_ for me. That had to be a three-kilometer drop. Higher. That’s… that’s…” she shook her head. “I’m staying with you.”

To Breq, I said, in a language Seivarden didn’t know, “ _You fell for her_.” In that language, the phrase had four meanings. Four emanations. The literal one: to drop from a great height. The second one: to have been foolishly taken in by a lie.The third: to take the blame or someone else’s mistakes or misdeeds.The fourth: to suddenly and fatedly fall in love.

At this, Breq openly and deliberately glowered at me in the human manner, her eyes boring furious holes into my face (Seivarden noticed, looked curiously between the two of us), as she said, “Seivarden, the moment I even _think_ you’re going to steal from me again, I will break both your legs and leave you there.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> write 2 me if you want  
> frick im tired lol i can't even come up with a pithy Esk/Var end note orz


End file.
